The key to innovation in the insurance industry is “outside-in” thinking, according to an executive from Nationwide, who uses the term to reinforce the idea that customer-centric mindsets are the best way to move innovation forward.
Executive Summary
"Are you using your vehicle to transport people?" That's just one of the archaic questions that insurers might still be asking, Chetan Kandhari, Chief Innovation and Digital Officer for Nationwide, observed during a recent CM Virtual Roundtable, "Is Innovation Overrated?" Panelists Jeffrey Bohn, Chief Research and Innovation Officer, Swiss Re Institute, and Phil Edmundson, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Corvus Insurance, weighed in as well, reporting on how an abundance of data paves the way for greater innovation. Watch the entire Virtual Roundtable—"Is Insurance Innovation Overrated?"—on the Carrier Management channel of InsuranceJournal.TV“It’s too easy to think inside out,” said Chetan Kandhari, chief innovation and digital officer for Nationwide. “‘How do you put the customer in the center?’ is a question that we should ask,” he said, summing up his idea that “innovation for innovation’s sake” is not a laudable goal. The North Star is innovation trying to create a better experience for the customer, he said during Carrier Management’s Virtual Roundtable, titled “Is Insurance Innovation Overrated?”
“We have forced the customer to think about the way we are organized as a company usually, in our profit and loss [centers], and the customer doesn’t really understand that,” Kandhari said, going on to describe the complexity of some property/casualty coverages that leave customers thinking, “I don’t really know what I have.”
Carriers are missing opportunities to educate their customers about risks and provide better coverage, he suggested.
