Volante CEO addresses technology challenge at Insider Roundtable

Founder and CEO of Volante Global, Talbir Bains joined a panel of distinguished industry practitioners for the latest Insurance Insider Roundtable, ‘The Path Ahead’. In a lengthy debate, participants addressed the issues of operational efficiency and data management, as well as tackling the fundamental challenge of increasing insurance penetration.

The in-depth discussion centred on the question – Is the much-vaunted collaborative approach by the (re)insurance and tech industries working out as planned? For Mr. Bains, the key point was whether the term ‘innovative’ could actually be applied to the measures the sector was currently implementing.

“The technology that is currently being used in the industry is not actually that forward-thinking,” he stated. “If we look at what the market complains about, it’s the cost of doing business. Another complaint is that underwriters spend less than 50 percent of their time underwriting. Have we addressed those issues? Until we have, we haven’t innovated at all, we haven’t even modernised.”
During the debate, Bains also address the subject of the data which underpins the industry. “We haven’t actually asked ourselves,” he put to fellow participants, “how good the quality of the data is that we keep in our own organisations. And the answer is not very.”

Tackling the extent to which access to enhanced data will serve to redefine the role of the underwriter and see them become portfolio managers, Bains asked: “But the challenge with that is, in a relationship-driven market, how does the business come to you when the underwriter is not doing what they do on a day-to-day basis? The relationship-based ecosystem is still an issue. We’re not the banking industry. We’re still a relationship-driven industry.”

The full transcript of the roundtable in which Bains also considers the evolving role of the MGA in this context and the critical importance of achieving full alignment between Agent and Carrier, is available here