Ecosystem & Open Innovation Partnership in Digital Insurance

The evolution of the financial sector is moving in the direction of a model marked by the logic of integrated ecosystems and thusOpen Finance. Insurance companies have also embarked on this path, which consists of the company's ability to create around itself a network of relationships and collaborations of various kinds with heterogeneous third parties that are also distant from the logic of insurance coverage. The new frontier does not end with integration between incumbents and start-ups active in the world of finance, but also between players from different sectors, to converge in a single value proposition linked to the needs of the customer, placed at the center of the entire ecosystem. Among the factors that can pave the way for the development of integrated and interconnected ecosystems is the increasingly marked shift from the analog to the digital world. The advent of innovative techniques and technologies (to name a few AI, IoT, Adavanced Analytics, etc.), the rapid advancement of BigTech in the financial sector, regulation that is proving to be more receptive and proactive towards technological innovation,as well as the growing increase in the number of connected devices and the frequency with which they are used, are among the main drivers of the digital transformation process that the financial world and, therefore, the insurance world, is experiencing. Knowing how to grasp and channel these drivers in the right direction enables the development of successful integrated ecosystems, from which both the consumer and the insurance company can benefit. Respectively, the insured is guaranteed a better customer experience thanks to a broader and more tailor-made service offering, also revisited in the interaction models between company and customer, which are increasingly fast, streamlined and transparent. As a result, the insurance company experiences a marked improvement in customer retention and a reduction in costs, which in turn allows it to go and devote significant resources to the development of projects capable of intercepting new targets and thus expanding the current customer base.

The push towardOpen Finance andOpen Innovation is inducing insurance companies to rethink deeply the ways through which it operates. Integrated ecosystems represent a potentially winning horizon for the players operating within it. However, the industry seems not yet to have embraced in its entirety the potential that can result. Many are the partnerships between insurance companies and other players, even those not related to the financial sector, but, in most cases, these are episodic and experimental experiences that remain confined within a narrow perimeter. One wonders about the level of maturity in adopting models, strategies but also a mindset compatible with the new ecosystem logics that require a more ductile approach, open to experimentation and change.