The ITC DIA Europe team has recently begun to host a series of webinars. Every month, we’ll be getting insights from the most influential decision-makers in the industry who will be showing you how to tackle the latest challenges and stay ahead of the competition. For our third webinar, we heard from Stefano de Liguoro, Chief Digital Officer at Zurich Spain, and Andrew Codd, President at Finnetics, to discuss the learnings that insurers and insurtechs can take from the fintech boom as they mature and navigate their way through the troublesome year ahead. In case you missed it, here are some important key takeaways from the session.

The key differences between the US and European insurtech markets

Stefano de Liguoro: The US insurtech space has been much broader try to compete with the old-fashioned way of doing business, leveraging new digital environments and new digital capability to try to change completely the customer experience using the data to automatize and personalize the customer experience and the transaction of the customer. The main phenomenon in Europe is much more considering the value chain of an insurance that is clearly something very, very, very big and also from a different touch point from a customer perspective. Insurtechs are mainly specialized in optimizing or changing and improving the customer experience or the transaction in specific areas of the value chain.

The state of fintech

Andrew Codd: When fintechs started out, they were very much focused on end-to-end operations and very much into customization within Europe as well. They were trying to tailor to the end-to-end solutions for their customers. They’re now looking to pick up bits of the value chain getting much more focused and I can’t help but feel that’s probably related to some improvements we’re seeing around the “ABCD” of fintech. So people would describe that as the artificial intelligence or the machine learning piece or blockchain where I’m seeing some products being developed, particularly around the crypto space.

How will current global economic difficulties affect fintech and insurtech?

Andrew Codd: There’s no fear of a downturn in terms of doing the right things in the business and focusing on the strategic plan for the next five years and where we fit into that and where we can help our clients and so on. So I think, if it continues this way, people in the fintech space anyway too worried. But I think competition is a good thing because you’re focusing on driving value in this age. And I think much more of these as-a-service solutions are more accepted and there’s probably going to be a bit of price pressure but I think value will out and hopefully, it’s a quick, quick downturn. What I would say about the pandemic though was that it definitely encouraged a lot more remote solutions and embracing of virtualization and a lot more appreciation of what software could do for your business. It feeds into where we are now. There were a lot of third-party providers. There were some people that had never heard of Zoom and Microsoft Teams which enhanced their offering in the meantime.

Stefano de Liguoro: Well first we had the pandemic, then the crisis that we are seeing in inflation that is affecting all industries. This is clearly making an alert to all companies but the need to be careful with investments isn’t affecting the appetite to innovate and generate new customer experience enhancements or new business models. But where to put the money, how fast you invest it and then try and learn model will be a bit focused on fewer cases. So you really concentrate the effort and the budget on those ones that make probably much more return on investment and less on those risky ones considering the economic scenario that we have now.

Will some insurtechs become as well-known as the challenger banks?

Stefano de Liguoro: So trust is the key concept from an insurance perspective. And the first challenge that insurtechs have is to generate that. So you have a brand new company where everything is digital and based on machine learning. So it is completely against this trust concept for 90% of people, because they say they don’t know the company. They say “I don’t know if this algorithm of the data”. While the brand, the traditional brand that has been generated for years and years by the agents and the broker may have become distrusted. So essentially what I would like to say with this is that the challenger insurtechs have something that is unique. They start from scratch, they start without any legacy. But they have nothing to rely on. And they have the opportunity to start a digital process end to end, to be much more efficient, to be much more straight to the new customer needs. But the challenge that they have is very huge; gaining trust.

The ITC DIA Europe point of view

There’s no doubt that the insurtech market is maturing fast. We can’t claim to be reaching the same heights and maturity as fintech but there’s no denying that acceleration is still taking place. Crisis breeds innovation and while there will likely be many insurtechs who aren’t able to survive, the ones that do will likely be hugely successful. While investors are far less likely to pump cash into as many start-ups as previously when they choose one to support they are now investing more to create a better chance for success. With many more insurtechs now switching to B2B models in favour of B2C, we’re also likely to see the carriers steal back some of the market share that the challengers had started to pry away from them. We’d all love to be insurtech’s answer to Revolut or Monzo, but the money and the success may lie elsewhere.

Interested in sponsoring one of our webinars and having a seat alongside other industry leaders and experts? Contact Mariëlle directly to discuss the opportunities.