Increasing Speed to Market and Reducing Development Costs for New Products and Experiences

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) is placing positive pressure on India’s insurers, pushing them to deliver more coverage and services to more of the population at more affordable prices – all the way to the last mile.

Strategies introduced include de-tariffing various insurance product lines, and mandating phygital distribution as well as the availability of products to previously excluded segments. Insurers often only have a few months’ notice before new regulations take affect and they need to comply.

Whilst these changes may be forced, it also creates opportunities for growth by promoting innovation and creating new market opportunities. Insurers that are first-to-market with great value coverage could own that market. But this scope and pace of change has never been experienced before, leaving many of India’s insurers to rely on their traditional on-premises and legacy core delivery insurtech systems and person-power to respond. Using old technology to respond to a modern approach creates higher development costs, longer lead times and ultimately, underwriting unprofitability.

But a new generation of cloud-native core delivery insurtech solutions is emerging as a powerful tool to solve this problem.

The problem with legacy insurtech

The legacy and on-prem systems many of India’s insurers are utilising are code-heavy, slow, costly and complex to operate. They limit the insurer’s abilities to adhere to new requirements and deliver better outcomes.

These systems require each new product to be built from scratch, from thousands of lines of code. For existing products, complex code needs to be deciphered to make even the simplest amendment. This puts immense pressure on coders and IT resources and takes much longer than necessary.

Insurers rely on manual workarounds and person-power to overcome these technological limitations, often creating new manual processes to compensate, which get baked into the products. Time is money and the excessive person-hours involved in responding to the IRDAI’s product and experience mandates, caused by the limitations of legacy and on prem-insurtech, significantly reduces any chances of underwriting profitability. The time taken to get to market also limits an insurers’ ability to capitalise on emerging opportunities.

The Solution: Cloud-Native Core Delivery Insurtech

The new wave of SaaS and cloud-native core delivery insurtech available in India, like that offered by Duck Creek Technologies, is designed exactly for this new environment thanks to features and capabilities like the following:

• Coverage Library: Insurers can create a library of reusable ‘coverage modules’ and components that serve as building blocks for insurance products. These modules can be duplicated and customised to create multiple distinct products, as opposed to having to build products from scratch.
• Product Hierarchy and Inheritance: Products and experiences are built using common elements and interconnected via a hierarchical structure which enables configurable (not coded) changes to be made at one level that impact all related products. This functionality also further reduces the need to redevelop common screens, coverages, integrations and functions for each new product.
• Ready-Made Content and Kits: Duck Creek provides out-of-the-box content and kits, including pre-built forms, definitions, rules, and rates, such as the India geographical layer, which can be utilized to significantly speed up the development process.
• Low- and no-code configuration: Duck Creek’s solutions don’t use complex code and ancient system languages. Virtually everything is either low- or no-code configurable using plain English. Supported by the logic and data, this allows business (as well as IT) users to build products and experiences in the system.

These enable the delivery of new products and experiences faster and more affordably, which ultimately enhances underwriting profitability.

Plug-and-play: With modern core insurtech, products and experiences are no longer built using complex code, one line at a time. This old method consumes excessive resources (time, money and people), inflating development costs. Instead, they’re built with re-useable and customisable components and modules drawn from the Coverage Library. This means a fast and cost-effective ‘plug-and-play’ approach to product and experience design, which now takes weeks instead of months or a year. This allows insurers to get to market faster and cheaper with new products to capture initial sales, whilst competitors catch up.

More products without the complexity: Using the Coverage Library and Product Hierarchy, combined with low-code configuration, and supported by ready-made content and line-of-business kits means everything is created within guardrails and to specification, so everything just fits and works together intuitively. This lack of complexity means more products can be created and managed more easily. This supports the creation of more niche products for increasingly diverse market segments, allowing you to attract more policyholders and generate more revenue.

Conclusion

In an industry where speed and efficiency are paramount, Duck Creek Technologies’ cloud-native core delivery insurtech offers a powerful solution for insurers looking to increase their speed to market and reduce development costs. By leveraging features like the Product Factory, Coverage Library and ready-made content, insurers can streamline their product development processes, enhance profitability, and maintain a competitive edge. As the insurance landscape continues to evolve, adopting such innovative technologies will be key to long-term success and sustainability.