The study shows participants within the Lloyd's insurance market understand the need to integrate technology in their business, with RPA the most desirable
The vast majority of those surveyed within the Lloyd's market believed RPA to be the most important innovation (Credit: Lloyd's of London)
The majority of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market’s syndicates, brokers and managing agents fear they’ll get left behind by modernisation through AI and RPA.
This is according to a study that found 67% believed innovation would be the key to their success in the future, and 69% were concerned that if they didn’t modernise, they’d be left behind.
NTT DATA UK head of insurance Kim Gray said: “After three hundred years as a world leader, the London specialty insurance market faces numerous challengers biting at its heels.
“This research demonstrates that the drumbeat of digital innovation is forcing the incumbents to wake up and start to plan for the future.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was identified by 70% as having a significant potential impact, with 73% citing its ability to speed up the manual processes that NTT DATA claims still dominate back-office operations in insurance.
“Technologies like RPA offer huge opportunities for insurers to speed up previously manual processes, cutting costs and improving the customer experience,” said Gray.
“RPA, and other automation technology, sits neatly alongside existing employee skillsets, empowering them to spend more of their time on value-added analytical tasks.”
According to NTT DATA, the survey was conducted with 100 senior individuals from syndicates, brokers and managing agents within Lloyd’s.
A strategy for implementing RPA and AI
Aside from RPA, motivations for driving increased uptake of technology were data security (69%), increased efficiency (62%) and customer-client demand (54%).
According to NTT DATA UK, a further 51% of respondents said they were focusing their budget on AI and machine learning, exploring use cases like using AI in underwriting to recognise patterns in large data sets and inform human decision making.
But Gray added that the key ingredient to successfully implementing any of the above technologies was a strategy to integrate them into the wider business.
She said: “It is imperative that organisations have a definitive strategy for change.
“The technology change programme has to be integrated with the rest of the business with the vision and budget to implement the right technology for the organisation.
“Several organisations within the London Market, such as Tokio Marine Kiln, an NTT DATA client, are already leading the way on using RPA in their processes, providing vital leadership for others to follow.”
Among those surveyed, 64% agreed that they had a clear strategy and a technology change team in place.