Programme

Z/Yen and PwC invite participants in the insurance market to join the InsurTech Academy, to explore areas of common interest in MDLs and related new technologies.

The core question is “how can InsurTech enhance wholesale and retail insurance and reinsurance”. The four themes are:

• Expanding Frontiers — develop and publishing thoughts on common insurance applications of MDL technology, cognitive computing, big data, robo-advisors, and the internet of things;
• Changing Systems — provide evidence-based examples on where insurtech does and doesn’t work in wholesale and retail insurance, and what policies, standards, or other initiatives might speed appropriate adoption;
• Delivering Services — such as standards, common technology bases, training, and shared demonstrators;
• Building Communities — engaging wider stakeholders (regulators, trade bodies, customers, suppliers) through meetings, networking and events, including conferences and training using collaborative tools.

The InsurTech Academy has an immediate practical agenda to identify MDL applications for which there is a positive business case at firm level and to obtain cross-firm agreement for implementation. In the first instance the collaboration would produce the following outputs:

• Definition of high-level functionality for each of the three target applications;
• A high-level business case for each application, based on the benefits accruing versus implementation costs at firm level, together with the central development costs;
• A high-level proof of concept; as discussed above, this would probably be an MDL which handled general document storage;
• Supporting ICT infrastructure that members can share;
• Such other outputs as the members prioritise within the initial budget.

The Academy will also provide a programme of training, round tables, and other events to assist participants to bring their key staff members up to speed on the capabilities of the new technology and to develop and share ideas. We have scheduled four roundtables on advanced technology integration and four on security already.

The intention would be for the collaboration to identify applications with positive business cases and to support their implementation. Members would have to commit to attend or otherwise participate in governance meetings and decisions, and to contribute to the scoping exercise for the applications.