How should insurers react to disruption?

KNect365, the world’s leading provider of live events and digital communities to share knowledge and make connections, organized the first insurance-focused event around short term trade credit in London on November 27, 2018.

The event was called “Insuring Short Term Trade Finance”. On this topic it offered insight from 20+ speakers representing a range of corporations like AIG, HSBC or IBM but also startups and new entrants like Hokodo.

One of the core objectives of the KNect365 event was to closely investigate the ongoing digitalisation of the trade credit insurance industry. While there were also segments covering the technologies that are actually transforming short term trade finance, the founder of Alpine Style Christophe Spoerry led a discussion panel focused on how should insurance industry professionals react to the current digital disruption.

The panelists discussing were Mai Duong (Hokodo), Chris Hall (Liberty Specialty Markets and the Toredo initiative), Ian Leslie (AON) and Daina Muceniece (Canopius).

The audience of insurers, brokers, business representatives and financiers was not new to the concept of digitalisation and disruption. Moreover, as the poll revealed, majority of the audience was coming from an organization that has already been implementing digital innovations.

Therefore it was only fitting that the panel took the direction of deeper thoughts on what digital innovation can mean for an organization at all and what personal profiles are required for roles dealing with abrupt innovation.

The panel revealed a certain dynamic between the smaller, more agile startups and the bigger, established organizations with more history and credibility.

While the startups build their business model mostly around a new opportunity that emerged from the digitalisation of the insurance industry, innovation is much less disruptive for a large organization that has a whole range of diversified income streams.

From this point of view, for a diversified organization digital innovation is not so much a disruption, but rather a complement and a way to serve the client more effectively. The larger an organization gets, the more tedious it becomes to implement changes touching the core business, but according to the panelists this challenge has a straightforward solution.

As long as there are responsible people willing to acknowledge the changes that are already happening in the insurance industry, startups and large corporations can each benefit from mutual partnerships and collaborative initiatives.

It is the startup that will be more efficient at implementing cutting-edge technology, but the established corporation will have the credibility and the resources.

The recording of the panel discussion can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/spoerry/20181127-informa-london

More information about the panel can be found here: https://medium.com/alpine-style/how-should-insurers-react-to-new-digital-disruption-35f77bb6a986

Alpine Style is a venture builder specialized in credit insurance, trade finance and B2B commerce.

Why this name? "Alpine style" refers to mountaineering in a self-sufficient manner, as opposed to "expedition style" which involves setting up stocked camps on the mountain, fixed ropes, using sherpas and supplemental oxygen. By going faster, Alpine style allows to explore new routes and to conquer new summits.

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