I’m going to go out on a limb and state that it is reckless (myopic ?) for an insurance carrier to manage itself as if it was one of its current – or future – component technologies or technology applications.
What do I mean?
Far too many people write that an insurance carrier is a technology company. The implication – quite erroneous – is that an insurance carrier should manage itself as a technology company.
Also erroneous:
The people who believe that insurance carriers should consider themselves ‘data companies’ or ‘mobility companies’ or ‘cloud companies’ or ‘AI (whether machine learning or deep learning or neural net or cognitive computing) companies.’
Any, or some combination of all of the above, technology applications as well as being able to better manage data are quite possibly important to insurance carriers. Personally, I believe the use of technology is critically important for insurance carriers to get-and-keep customers.
However, financial success for any insurance carrier is having the ability – and continually strengthening the ability – to manage itself as an insurance carrier in its entirety.
An entirety of functional skills (e.g. underwriting, marketing, product development, sales and distribution), interpersonal skills (e.g. customer service, communications and collaboration), and financial skills (e.g. product pricing, assuming/ceding reinsurance).
The various technologies – and their applications – have a role to play. But the deployment of technology applications is not the ‘beginning and end’ of any insurance carrier’s financial success (as measured by the metrics of the insurance lines of business the carrier conducts commerce).
The moat of a successful insurance carrier has several attributes – beyond the application of any existing or newly favored technology – that keeps competitors at bay while simultaneously keeping clients on the books.
Rabkin's Opinions 