Introducing the InsurTalk Podcast: Innovation is About Making Ideas Happen

  • Laura Drabik

June 05, 2020

Executing innovation isn't easy, especially in an industry steeped in history and regulations. The property and casualty insurance industry is one of those. The obstacles and challenges are many, including working within the confines of manual activities, human-based servicing, stale product offerings, and a legacy employee mindset. Innovation is a process, one that needs a solid beginning and of course, persistence.

I'm the chief evangelist at Guidewire Software, and I have spent more than 20 years in the field, working with insurers to understand how they want and need to innovate. During my 14 years with Guidewire, I have been fortunate to witness our customers innovate in their own unique markets. The sizes of the insurers and their projects have varied but one true constant is these initiatives started with ideas which germinated into action and results. To be witness to and play a role in those innovations is an incredible experience, and it is what inspired our new podcast series—InsurTalk. (https://guidewireinsurtalk.podbean.com/ )

Many in the industry talk about why insurers need to innovate, and we'll do that. However, we will also talk to the insurers, insurtechs, and industry experts about how an innovation went from an idea to a reality. And we'll focus on the most important ideas that carrier should learn to succeed in the current and future environment from operational and business reality, such as new distribution models, launching new products, entering new markets, transforming claim servicing to digital transformation and modernization efforts that involve chatbots, IoT or artificial intelligence, to developing ways to reach and help unique nontraditional consumers.

This podcast series is about P&C insurers turning possibilities into realities. Our first two episodes are now available, and you can listen to them here. But make sure you subscribe to InsurTalk on Apple podcast, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts and you can rate and review this show on Apple podcast. It helps others learn about and discover the show.

In the first episode, I talked to Aviva Italy Chief Operating Officer Vittorio Giusti about how they radically redesigned their customer experience and implemented a digital, paperless workflow tailored to the customer — creating a Netflix insurance experience. Vittorio also discusses the importance of leveraging a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach to get to market quickly, as well as the importance of creating an internal startup where the unit’s goal is to “Make people dream.” We recently issued a press release announcing that Aviva Italy selected Guidewire InsuranceSuite Cloud to accelerate innovation, maintain technical currency, and empower its employees, and Guidewire EnterpriseEngage to deliver omnichannel experiences to all its stakeholders.

I also talked with the chief transformation officer at Economical Insurance, Alice Keung about the launch of the first P&C digital direct channel in Canada – Sonnet. Alice provides insight into their target market and what differentiates this market from the portion of the population that values the guidance of a broker. She also describes their strategy for neutralizing any broker pushback and critical advice for launching a digital insurer.

Thank you for listening. We are excited to bring you more InsurTalk episodes to prove it's not just about ideas. It's about making ideas happen.

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