Our Weekly Virtual Town Halls have become a great opportunity for us to bring our insurer client and Council community together, and we are extremely pleased with the positive feedback received. As Novarica continues delivering an all-virtual 2020 events calendar, we look forward to the lessons we will learn and share with participants along the way.
Novarica will continue these sessions every Tuesday from 1-2 PM EST through midyear. Each week will focus on new and emerging issues, including what a return to the office may look like and how to effectively manage a remote workforce.
Last week, a panel of Novarica VPs discussed the changing notions of strategic partners. Novarica EVP Martina Conlon began the conversation by outlining several guidelines insurers should keep in mind when reviewing existing vendor relationships and establishing new ones. She stressed that carriers should maintain ownership of the process, get the right people involved, and thoroughly develop requirements to maintain transparency. Martina also touched on how Novarica is seeing a decrease in demand for BPO providers that typically replace manual, on-site processes. With work becoming more remote, insurers are finding ways around using these services and transitioning to platforms and service offerings that perform these tasks electronically.
Jeff Goldberg, Novarica EVP, added points regarding insurers working with, or planning to work with, InsureTechs. He discussed how it was important for insurers to stay close to vendors and strive to gain a clear picture of how that vendor is coping during the crisis. Seeing beyond the rhetoric and asking questions could help insurers prepare if things should go sideways for an InsureTech. Relationships need to be actively managed now more than ever. Jeff also explored some of the key best practices for carriers embarking on developing SaaS agreements, an increasingly critical mechanism for delivering capabilities as part of insurers’ evolving technology stacks.
The presentation ended with Novarica VP Kevin Rall discussing the evolution of interactions between agents and carriers. Insurers looking to create strong partnerships should identify the digital leaders in their distribution channels that are ready and eager to bring new capabilities to the market. On the flip side, agents are looking for insurers that prioritize communication and transparency. The key point that Kevin stressed was simplicity. Insurers should make sure they are not over-engineering their interactions with agents and policyholders. New capabilities should have use cases that make sense and provide clear value. It is also important that insurers work to develop a view of their operations “from the outside looking in,” a significant departure from traditional development approaches, which heavily rely on internal perspectives and expertise.
This week, we will be joined by our CEO Matthew Josefowicz and Novarica VP Paul Legutko to further discuss the impacts of this pandemic. The conversation will center on how digital strategies are evolving during COVID-19 and how technology can be used to support digital marketing strategies. We look forward to sharing these and other new insights this summer.
Add new comment