C-Suite Leaders on the Future of Insurtech

Insurtech has been a buzzword in the insurance industry for more than a decade now, but what does that mean to the leaders who are making the decisions? At the 2024 BrokerTech Connect, C-Suite executives at the front lines of the digital transformation joined a panel discussion on how they are navigating the currents of innovation. 

The panel of experts was moderated by Dave Ashton, Chief Information Officer at Holmes Murphy and featured:  

• Angela Alaniz, Chief Digital Officer, CRC Group
• Lovedeep Saini, Chief Analytics Officer, Conner Strong & Buckelew
• Matt Watkins, Chief Information Officer, IMA Financial Group

The panel shared how firms are balancing excitement around new tools with the realities of implementation and change management. From the promise—and pitfalls—of artificial intelligence (AI) to the challenge of integrating new technologies into legacy systems, the panelists had a candid and forward-looking discussion focused on real-world insights. 

The Elephant in the Room

Since November 30, 2022, nearly every conversation about insurtech trends has included the words artificial intelligence. From submission intake to data ingestion, AI is creating opportunities around operational efficiencies and accelerating functions that were already happening within the insurance brokerage space. 

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“A day does not go by that I don’t have an email in my inbox from a company that’s telling me they can do submission intake, data extraction, and ingestion using AI,” Alaniz shared. 

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“It's not replacing humans, but it's empowering them to do their day-to-day jobs so they can focus on clients and their more complex problems,” Saini added. 

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While this kind of excitement has ushered in a multitude of startups and tech providers over the last several years, panelists agreed the insurance industry is still navigating where these solutions can deliver real value—and how to bring that value into existing systems. 

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“I don’t think we’re seeing the full impact of these trends yet,” Alaniz continued. “Maybe early indications, but certainly there’s a lot of hype around AI.”

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Integration Facilitates Innovation

If AI is the current buzzword, integration is a foundational need. Panelists emphasized the desire for systems to talk to one another, and frustration when they don’t. 

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“We want our agency management system to talk to our reporting system,” Saini said. “We want it to talk to our CRM.” That vision of connectivity is increasingly possible—though not always easy to implement. But innovation is happening, and tech giants are aiming to bring more open architecture to the space. 

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As Watkins pointed out, “We are seeing a lot of the major technology platforms—Salesforce, Microsoft—start to pay more attention to brokerages and insurance.” While that attention and focus on the insurance market is bringing more open architecture and can help simplify integrations, he noted it also highlights gaps that still exist and opens the door for insurtech startups to provide value within those gaps. 

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Challenges in Change

While the appetite for innovation and technology has grown significantly over the years, implementation and adoption remains a prominent challenge. System complexity, internal resistance, and change fatigue are all barriers to successful implementations. 

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“Traditional agency management systems make it difficult to integrate new insurtech platforms,” said Saini. Getting new tools in place often requires workarounds or add-ons, which can lead to inefficiencies if not well-managed. “AI, predictive modeling, machine learning, it’s all going to help us, but there are security concerns around their transparency and we cannot blindly rely on them.” 

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Watkins echoed the challenge of rollout fatigue: “I think our biggest challenge is resistance to change. We want to pilot new things, we want to do more with technology, but we end up with a lot of point solutions. Employees get overwhelmed.” Watkins also pointed out that a solution to this fatigue is to be more intentional. “How do the new technologies accompany the workflow that [employees are] already doing to perform their jobs so they don’t have to go to a different tool? They may not know there are 10 technologies or platforms in the background, but they are getting the information and answers they need.” 

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Alaniz added, “We built an internal platform that sits on top of our agency management system to handle those integrations because the AMS is not capable of that integration. That is where we engage and serve up pilots.” 

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Ultimately, the goal of these technologies is to make efficiency gains easier, and make it feel like an extension of what people are already doing—not something completely new. 

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Looking Ahead 

As AI and other advanced technologies mature, the companies that succeed will be those that can align tools with positive outcomes—and bring their people along for the ride. 

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“If we are not thinking about the implementation process and making change management easier, the best technology in the world isn’t going to help us,” Alaniz said. 

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Whether it’s AI-powered data extraction or building an internal ecosystem of integrated tools, successful innovation is less about what’s trending and more about what sticks. 

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“To me, it goes back to that culture of curiosity and continuous learning,” Watkins said. “I think we want people that are curious about how to leverage these new technologies, while simultaneously embracing the change and the innovation that’s coming.”

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