19NOVEMBER 2020and how they buy it, leaving insurers the ability to transform transactions. Increasing transparency around pricing and data could reduce the role for intermediaries, such as brokers, in small-scale products. On the other hand, sophisticated new data tools will expand the power of brokers to build new, innovative products.Finally, this disruption is allowing for possibilities for insurers to reduce friction. The processes involved in insurance can be costly for companies and complicated for customers. Reducing this friction and improving customer journeys is a big opportunity. On the consumer side, this could include using chatbots. At the backend, it could mean the use of technologies like blockchain, which was originally built to record bitcoin transactions, to handle customer records or claims processing.The Collaborative Future of InsurtechStartups, entrepreneurs and industry disruptors are impacting nearly every industry, and they will affect risk management as well. Major innovation in our industry will happen as partnerships that include large organizations, research entities, such as universities, and new tech startups create platforms that tackle today's `stubborn' risk problems, such as cyber and pandemic. These Insurtech startups are focusing on transforming certain steps of the insurance process, rather than disrupting the whole industry. They will find that commercial success will involve partnering up with incumbents rather than attempting to bring down traditional organizations.There can be radical innovation in collaboration. Blockchain has been seen as a highly disruptive technology, but one of the leading players investing and implementing innovative bitcoin solutions has been R3, a consortium made up of some of the biggest names in the financial sector including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan.Consortia and large companies can implement their own accelerator or incubator programs. These give startup teams the opportunity and resources to develop their ideas, and give incumbents easy access to the cutting-edge technology that is developed. If an incubator is being run by a corporate firm, senior executives can meet with those startup firms and collaborate with them. It helps some of those startup firms build out a business plan.These partnerships will take time to bear fruit. This may be exacerbated by friction between slow-moving, cautious incumbent firms, and move fast startups.But if Insurtech, and other disruptive industries are to deliver on their promise of an improved customer experience--both opportunity and risk will need to be reimagined. The key to collaboration will be embracing disruption and working for a common outcome. The true transformation of industries will happen as we reimagine risk altogether, exploring the synergies between evolving societies and technology.
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