Redefining tomorrow: RDT and the future of insurance

The rise of insurtech is reflected in the amount of column inches devoted to new technology and its power to transform one of our most conservative industries. Not known for innovation, insurance is slow moving, labour intensive, bound by tradition and convention. But if the current media focus on disruption is anything to go by, insurance is on the threshold of big changes and is ready to embrace a digital future.

But who will help to make this happen, and how will insurers stay ahead of the growing wave of technology startups and challenger brands? The debate was joined in last month’s Raconteur Insurance supplement*, distributed with The Times, which provided a snapshot of the issues and players in a changing industry. In this article we comment on some of the trends covered in the supplement, and provide RDT’s vision for the future.

A key theme of the editorial was that although there is a wealth of data available, both structured and unstructured, and a host of digital resources and analytical tools that promise to turn straw into gold, insurers are struggling to find their way – a fact underlined by recent PwC research that found that while 74 per cent of insurers believe their business is at risk of disruption, 32 per cent are not yet engaging with technology firms on any level.

RDT's role as an Insurtech accelerator

The importance of RDT’s role as an insurtech accelerator was highlighted this week in a speech given by PricewaterhouseCooopers’ insurtech consultant.

Speaking at the relaunch of global tech network Startupbootcamp’s insurtech programme on September 13 and reported in the Insurance Times, Kasia Kirkland discussed how partnerships between start-ups and accelerators will help the insurance industry.

Ms Kirkland, who has in the past written about the need for insurers to appear more trustworthy to consumers, said: ‘We see insurtech as a fantastic opportunity to try to improve the level of trust and the level of transparency. Some insurers are choosing in-house innovation, others are building their own start-ups. But the really wise ones are partnering with accelerators.’

Agile Sprint Planning

In our previous article on Agile meetings we discussed how we prepare user stories for the teams. Let’s look at what happens next.

Sprint Planning

Once a user story has been prepared and given priority in the product backlog the team will take this work into the sprint planning meeting. This session is where the team plans out what must be done to deliver it. This will include tasks around design, development and testing, including performance. Some of these sessions can get quite technical and detailed so we need to make sure it is facilitated well, which is the job of the scrum master. It’s likely that a lot of questions will crop up, so having the product owner at hand is recommended.