4 December 2019

Insurtech making insurance more appealing to Millennials


By eliminating the most mundane tasks, insurtech is making jobs more rewarding and autonomous, making it easier to attract a new generation of talent to the sector, according to Rocco Mancini, captive advisor at Marsh.

Speaking at the Cayman Captive Forum, Elisha Deol, global insurtech programme director at KPMG, added that blockchain is just one part of a technology revolution that is transforming the world of work, alongside things like artificial intelligence and robotic process automation.

And while many in the industry and beyond still regard the blockchain with considerable suspicion, and worry that implementing it will expose them to reputational risk, Mancini argued the opposite is true: “Blockchain actually reduces reputational risk by making all decisions fully auditable and giving regulators access to accurate and complete information,” he said.

Mancini said captives should think not only of what blockchain can do for them, but of what they can do for blockchain. Many technology companies developing blockchain technology need insurance and struggle to get it from the commercial market, he said, noting captives can plug that gap.

He said: “Captives are quicker and more nimble than commercial insurers. They still move at a snail's pace, but they are quicker than commercial insurers.”

Blockchain technology can also transform the relationship between captives and their service providers, making the process of sharing data vastly more efficient, said Mancini. Captives lean heavily on their service providers, using different institutions for different purposes, often across borders, making efficient data sharing imperative.

The blockchain can also improve the way data is shared within organisations, for example giving everyone the same information about a global property programme, he added.

Insurtech generally is forcing the insurance industry to look again at processes that have remain unchanged for years, making the industry significantly more efficient. “This is a paradigm shift,” he said.