Jonne Scholten elaborates on Synechron's new InsurTech program

Last month Synechron announced that it has launched a new programme that helps insurance companies speed up their technology-led innovation and digital transformation. The so-called ‘InsurTech Accelerator Program’ merges Synechron’s consulting, innovation en technology expertise to help clients understand and embrace trends such as blockckchain, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation. Jonne Scholten, a managing consultant at Synechron in Europe, elaborates on the new accelerator programme.

Why is this initiative important to the insurance industry?

The insurance industry has historically been slow to change, but new entrants and startups to the industry are creating instability among the traditional players and have forced them to innovate or be left behind. Synechron's InsurTech Accelerators puts the power back into the hands of the traditional insurers, aiming to help them keep up with agile new players in the industry by helping them leverage innovative technologies to address challenges and pain points in their processes. 

The programme also helps them deliver more customised and intuitive solutions to the changing demands of a digital-first customer and their evolving expectations of how to interact with providers. 

Can you give a concrete example of how blockchain or artificial intelligence can help insurers gain an edge?

Innovative emerging technologies such as AI and blockchain can help insurance companies gain an advantage. This is important at a time when the financial services industry as a whole is undergoing mass digitalisation and technological advancements, but especially for insurance, as this market has been slow to change previously and is at risk of being disrupted by FinTech and startup players. Building on changing customer expectations, they leverage technology and digital initiatives to be more intuitively digital, self-service, and streamlined.

Onboarding is a large area where AI automation and natural language processing (NLP) can be applied to create better efficiencies and show cost and time savings. AI can also be applied to visualise risk better by leveraging predictive analytics, as well as automation in the underwriting and scoring process. Blockchain can be applied in insurance claims processing by leveraging smart contracts coupled with the Internet of Things (IoT) to assist with asset provenance, reduction of fraud, and straight-through processing of high-volume, low-value claims, and in trade finance, to increase transparency and minimise fraud by offering one immutable record for both banks and corporates, like insurance companies, to use.

What are all the areas which are covered by the new programme?

The InsurTech Accelerator Program includes a suite of InsurTech Accelerator applications, each based on a unique business case, to help insurers utilise innovative technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA), mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), digital user experience and more. 

From Synechron’s perspective, how does this align with your business strategy?

The InsurTech Accelerator program combines Synechron’s ‘Power of Three’ model, pairing its expertise with digital innovation, business consulting, and technological capabilities to deliver end-to-end solutions to insurance business challenges through transformative digital initiatives and solutions in the most effective way.

Do you plan to launch any other accelerators in the future?

The InsurTech Accelerator Program is the third set of Accelerators to come to Synechron's FinLabs. Synechron is always looking toward the next innovation and how to make business processes better and more seamless utilising the latest in technology. That being said, additional Accelerators will join the roster of Synechron's FinLabs in 2018.

The ‘InsurTech Accelerator Program’ of Synechron builds on two previous programmes that were launched focused on blockchain en artificial intelligence. All three programmes are open for organisations in the financial services sector.