Generative AI Reveals Six Insurance Industry Innovation Trends

By Kenneth Saldanha & Anna Benetto, Accenture —

We are delighted once again to see the spirit of innovation on display in the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards. This year, through the power of Generative AI, we also uncovered six key trends shaping the future of the insurance industry.

Since their inception in 2016, the Awards program has served as a catalyst for innovation in the insurance sector. The winners are innovative insurers and insurtechs that have pushed boundaries, fostered collaboration, and created meaningful impact on the way their customers live and work.

Innovation trends in 2023

Every year, we analyze submission data from hundreds of award entries to better understand the innovation trends in the industry. This year, submissions were securely fed into our Generative AI model, which extracted key themes and trends from the entries.

Hours of work was done in minutes. We then shared these six innovation trends with the winners on the night of the awards ceremony. Here’s what we found:

1. Digital customer experience — Insurers have an unprecedented opportunity to build trust with customers by proactively improving the engagement, and delivering a seamless, personalized experience in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. This trend relates to the increasing adoption of technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to enhance the overall customer experience across various aspects of insurance.
2. Health and well-being convergence — This trend is driven by the increasing consumer demand for holistic and personalized care, as well as the recognition that promoting healthy lifestyles can reduce claims costs and improve customer retention.
3. Advanced analytics and personalization — The use of advanced analytics and personalization allows insurers to enhance customer engagement, streamline processes, and drive revenue growth. This trend is growing as insurers leverage customer behavior and preference data to deliver solutions that meet their needs.
4. Sustainability — The insurance industry increasingly seeks to adapt to the growing needs and evolving demands of consumers and regulators for environmentally responsible products and services. Carriers that embrace sustainability are positioned as industry leaders supporting a sustainable future.
5. Inclusive insurance — The driver behind this trend is the growing awareness that disadvantaged segments, including low-income households, migrants, or small businesses, often lack access to affordable insurance that meets their needs. Expanding into underserved markets, carriers help bridge the protection gap and contribute to financial well-being and stability.
6. Ecosystem collaboration — This trend is accelerated by the rapidly changing landscape of the insurance industry, as well as the need for insurers to be more agile, customer-centric, and efficient in their operations. We are seeing a rise in strategic partnerships, cross-industry collaborations, and the creation of new ecosystems that leverage emerging technologies and data-driven insights to deliver better outcomes.

Thank you to everyone who submitted entries to the 2023 Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards. You are all trend setters and pioneers on the New Performance Frontier for insurance.

About the Authors

Kenneth Saldanha, Senior Managing Director – Global Insurance Lead, Accenture:

For more than two decades Kenneth has guided insurance carriers in optimizing their business strategies and operations. He has helped clients emerge stronger and more competitive from every kind of challenge—from market headwinds to organizational realignments—and now works with them to navigate the complexities of ongoing industry disruption and convergence. Kenneth earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1998. He and his wife have since lived and raised their three children in Minneapolis.

Anna Benetto, Strategy & Consulting Managing Director and Executive Sponsor of the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards Accenture:

Anna is a Strategy & Consulting in Managing Director in Accenture’s Insurance practice. She is also the Executive Sponsor for the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards. Anna’s great passion is helping clients improve their competitive advantage in transforming markets through innovation and digital technologies. She leads transformation programs for major insurance companies, focusing on data & AI, adoption of digital platforms for managing new risks and the regulatory challenges of the Italian market, which require a reinvention of traditional insurance companies. Anna has a master’s degree in Management Engineering, Financial Management, from the Polytechnic University of Turin and a specialization in Financial Innovation Management from SDA Bocconi.

About Accenture

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent and innovation led company with 738,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. We are uniquely able to deliver tangible outcomes because of our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Accenture Song. These capabilities, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients succeed and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Learn more at www.accenture.com.

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SOURCE: Accenture