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A New World Of Opportunity

ARTICLE BY

  • Tarina Vlok
  • MD
  • Elite Risk Acceptances, a subsidiary of Old Mutual Insure

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As we look to 2025, non-life insurers must navigate a landscape shaped by technological advancements, climate change, and shifting customer needs and preferences. To remain relevant, the industry must adapt swiftly and strategically.

 

By Tarina Vlok, MD, Elite Risk Acceptances, a subsidiary of Old Mutual Insure

The PwC Insurance 2025 and Beyond report offers valuable insights into the industry’s forward-looking strategies and identifies five global trends shaping the future of insurance. These trends highlight the need for insurers to innovate, collaborate, and align with market demands.

Widening trust gap in an increasingly uncertain world

Trust remains the cornerstone of insurance. Research indicates a worldwide trust deficit in financial institutions of ten percentage points lower than the average for other industries. As insurers, our role extends beyond protecting assets; we are integral to the economy and society. We must focus on rebuilding trust. This can be supported by consumer education, excellent service, delivering on our promises, and ensuring that our various Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts are transparent, meaningful and authentic. Insurers must integrate ESG principles into our core strategies to embrace a shift towards sustainable insurance practices and products. We must align with changing customer preferences, as more individuals and businesses seek to engage with socially responsible brands.

With their Magical Moments initiative, Old Mutual Insure has been able to reach out to customers by going above and beyond products and services and finding meaningful ways to connect through empathy and care. Through a small gesture of kindness, this initiative bridges the gap between customer and business, bringing humanity into insurance. Magical Moments not only connects customers with the business, but also connects staff, brokers and advisers.

Rapidly evolving customer needs and preferences

In the past few years, we have seen a dramatic change in client behaviours and preferences. From acquisition to service demands, clients are no longer simply looking for financial protection. They want solutions aligned to the context of their personal lives and expect insurers to go beyond their risk transfer obligations towards a partnership that includes end-to-end solutions for risk prediction, prevention and mitigation. They also expect the convenience from insurers that they experience from other businesses.

We must become customer-obsessed, align our strategies to this core value, and engage with customers according to their preferences. To do this, we need to focus on data-driven personalisation and predictive analytics, which are crucial to effectively addressing customer preferences.

An increasingly digital and AI-driven world

From self-driving cars, wearables, and smart homes, to the metaverse, crypto assets, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the technological future is here and embedded in our lives. As insurers, we rely heavily on data to build our pricing models, but we are also moving to the next frontier, which is using data, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation to interact with and serve our clients across the value chain. Digital capabilities empower innovation and agility, and insurers need to embrace this. Digital technologies can provide valuable insights and customised solutions aligned to customers’ changing preferences.

Climate risk and a focus on sustainability

Climate change is here to stay. The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters are forcing insurers to reassess risk models. Insurers are developing a deep understanding of portfolios to rebuild risk and pricing models so as to remain sustainable and respond to the unpredictability of climate-related losses. In the United States, several insurers have opted out of high-risk regions which are vulnerable to wildfire, storm, and flood. We want to do our utmost to avoid “bluelining” by exiting vulnerable areas, by rather collaborating with our clients, intermediaries, and experts to ensure that we have holistic catastrophe models, which can effectively respond to climate change.

Old Mutual Insure has collaborated with academic institutions and meteorologists, making use of historical and external data, to identify risks associated with climate change. Through this collaboration, the company is able to work with brokers to mitigate this risk.

Convergence, collaboration, and competition

It is important to connect with our clients in a way that is meaningful. As insurers, we need to embrace partnerships beyond the traditional industry boundaries and engage in cross-industry collaboration. This is to create complete ecosystems where insurance is part of an enhanced value chain for customers. For example, we see a growing trend of traditional insurers partnering with InsurTech firms to leverage cutting-edge technology and unlock new growth opportunities.

We are excited about what 2025 holds. Our focus is on understanding our broker and customer needs, becoming customer-obsessed, delivering value by embracing technological capabilities, and ensuring our business remains sustainable to enable us to continue to protect our clients’ valuable assets. Our success hinges on our ability to adapt, innovate, and collaborate. By embracing change, we not only protect our clients’ futures but also shape the future of insurance.

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