As FINEOS continues to provide insurers with superior technology solutions that enable them to care for the people that they serve, we must support the current market while constantly building for tomorrow’s customer. To do this, we need to tap into the best thinking about the future of the insurance market, including the social and political drivers that will shape that market.
David Smith, futurologist and Chief Executive of Global Futures and Foresight, has collaborated with us to produce a white paper exploring the changes coming in the nature of work, driven by digitalization, shifting economic relationships, and the empowerment of the individual. In this paper, David makes a compelling case for the rise of the freelance economy and the implications of that business model on the Life, Accident and Health Benefits market. Thoughtful dialogue is critically important in today’s political atmosphere of extreme polarization, where many immediately assume the only answers are total socialization of benefits or a pure laissez faire marketplace. David proposes a few different models that can support a more flexible work model, provide choice for the individual, and still support both government benefits options and a commercial benefits market.
This newly released white paper, entitled “Are Insurers Ready for the New Worker? The Future of Work and Benefits” is available for download here.
As technologists, it’s important to remember that good systems are designed to either be easily replaced when unexpected changes in the business requirement demand it or to ensure that our systems can evolve with the business requirements as they change. Smartphones and most consumer electronics fall into the first category as the cost of replacement is relatively small and the advantage of upgrade is significant. Core insurance systems fall in the second category, where maintaining both product information and customer relationship information over decades is a critical business requirement. Unfortunately, most insurance core systems are designed to meet immediate business requirements at best, with small regard for where our market may move in the foreseeable future, creating the insurance industry legacy challenge that must be addressed as this market sea-change occurs.
To break this cycle and build systems that support tomorrow’s customer, it is critically important to look ahead and think about the issues in this paper.
