Insurance Trends for 2023

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Now that we’re almost through the seventh month of 2022, we decided to get a jump on the upcoming year and publish a list of the trends we hope to see in 2023.

Since we wrote about no-code/low-code platforms in February of this year, we were inspired to fire preemptively by something we found in Capgemini’s Top Trends in Property/Casualty Insurance: 2022. It was this:

P&C insurers are increasingly adopting no-code/low-code platforms to compress application development cycles, improve efficiency, and go to market faster … No-code and low-code platforms with built-in, ready-to-use software development components enable insurers to create and deliver new apps faster than traditional methods.

Since we’d rather be early to the dance than late, here are the Top Five Trends we hope to see in 2023:

  1. Technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications will no longer write about existing technologies as if they’re new or emerging.
  2. Technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications will know what vendors in the industry actually offer, rather than trying to make it seem as if they’re ahead of some curve.
  3. Technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications won’t be quite so quick to fall in love with whatever they think the next big thing (TNBT) might be.
  4. Technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications won’t write about digital transformation as if digital transformation hasn’t been underway since we all survived Y2K.
  5. Technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications will actually define insurtech, rather than applying the term to everything from Ziggy and Gomer in their garage with a coding handbook to startup MGAs and insurers.

Who’s On First?

At the time at which there was still a proliferation of print publications in the insurance industry, we used to bet people that if they ripped the covers off the trade magazines, ignored all other indications of publishing dates, and tried to guess when those magazines were published, they wouldn’t be able to do it. Given the fact that the magazines were all writing about the same things ad infinitum, we never lost a penny.

The most radical digital transformation in the insurance industry is that technology consultants, analysts, and trade publications now publish virtually what the magazines used to publish in print.

We hope they get better at balancing their affinities for TNBT with pragmatic looks at what exists in the present.

Insuratainment

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Because we like to keep ourselves abreast of what’s going on in the insurance industry, we happed across a post from Comperemedia purporting to identify three emerging trends. They are:

  1. Ecosystems Expanding
  2. Brands as a Life Coach
  3. Beyond the Screen as We Know It.

We don’t know what any of those things are supposed to mean. So, we looked up Comperemedia. According to its parent company, Mintel, Comperemedia is:

The complete and expert source of product-level data and insight in direct marketing. We monitor acquisition strategies, pricing, targeted offers and product introductions from our rolling and lifecycle panels in five channels for the US and Canada.

As if pedestrians don’t have enough to worry about already, now we have to be wary of rolling panels. But that’s not what confused us the most.

Say What?

What really caused us to scratch our heads was this, under trend #1 above:

In the face of ongoing pandemic concerns like inflation, exponential increases in product offerings and choices, and limited out-of-home experiences, consumers will demand control via stability, simplified choices, and fresh entertainment experiences.

We could understand how and why inflation might be a pandemic concern. We got the fact that exponential increases in product offerings might cause curiosity, if not concern. We share people’s concerns about limited out-of-home experiences. And we’re right there with the desire for stability and simplified choices. Give us simple coverage choices from a stable company, and we’re good to go.

But we have to admit to being stymied by fresh entertainment experiences. At first we thought it might be a typo. It’s easy enough to imagine typographical errors of one, two, or maybe even 10 characters. But 30? That felt like a stretch. Even when we had to type The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog in our high school typing class, blindfolded, we didn’t make that many typos. Then we thought maybe the folks at Comperemedia believed consumers wanted to be entertained by the insurance they buy. We enjoy all of the insurance protection we’ve purchased in our lives. But we can’t recall having been entertained by any of it.

The Fine Print?

We may or may not call the folks at Comperemedia to find out what they’re on about. But in the meantime, we’re going to play closer attention to the fine print in our insurance policies.

We can’t stand the thought that we may be missing something.