As we move into a new phase of innovation after the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, insurers need to look ahead to determine what their technology priorities should be today. Our 2022 Technology Vision report focuses on the expansion of the digital world and the increasing overlap between physical and virtual reality. One of the trends I think is most relevant to insurance carriers is Accenture’s vision for the Programmable World.

In the report, Accenture found that 74% of global executives said that the number of IoT or edge devices deployed in their organizations significantly expanded over the past three years. With that data in mind, insurers need to understand how their products and customer interactions can stand out in an increasingly digitalized reality.

If insurance leaders want to pull ahead, they need to focus on functionality rather than novelty. A truly programmable world will rely on robust technology

Within the insurance industry, we understand that in order to remain relevant and retain market share we need to be agile, innovative and adopt new technologies. From a technical point of view, this means that insurers need to be able to adapt their enterprise architecture quickly and sustainably in order to reinvent themselves and grow. However, in an industry rife with legacy architecture, systems modernization is a pressing problem. How can insurers design future systems that both uphold the legacy they have created and integrate into the modern world?

Accenture is working alongside its insurance clients to address this challenge. The result is a new frontier in how technological infrastructure is built.

Insurance architecture design is changing

We need to change how insurance architecture is designed for greater agility and growth. This is not confined to our industry alone. Across all industries, there is a seismic shift from inflexible, monolithic

This post is part of a series sponsored by IAT Insurance Group.

Historically high inflation, a looming recession and serious supply chain struggles continue to plague fleet owners and owner-operators who are the backbone of our economy, moving 72% of the nation’s freight.

Consumer spending is showing signs of slowing and an economic downturn or full-scale recession would significantly impact freight demand and margins.^[1] Although that lower demand could help alleviate some of the pressure of the fleet driver shortage, smaller fleets are likely to feel more pain.

While larger fleets, with shipper contracts, will typically weather the economic storm, some will be forced to park trucks and reduce staff. With an estimated driver shortage of 80,000,^[2] some fleets will have an opportunity to expand as there will be less competition for quality drivers.

While significant, these strong economic headwinds represent only of a few of the challenges

As insurers look to the next horizon of expansion with an inclusive and diverse approach, there are a number of opportunities influencing scale potential including acquisitions, capital investments, the metaverse and the emergence of insurtech 2.0.

In this month’s Insurance News Analysis, Joanne Laffan and I discuss how a pre-scale insurer like Lemonade is planning to leapfrog its competitors through its recent acquisition of Metromile, a pay-per-mile car insurance company.

With the advent of Ethereum Merge in an effort to combat the carbon-intense energy consumption from blockchain in cryptocurrency, we discuss what it means for insurers’ capital investments as they’re trying to stay on top of both new technology and net zero targets.

We also discuss some of the early ways we expect to see the metaverse impact insurers’ operations and their customer and employee experiences. Plus we focus on the implications of so-called ‘insurtech 2.0’ which emerged as

What role will insurance play in the future? How can insurers work with customers and parallel industries to create tangible value and make a positive impact on our planet? These are some of the questions answered in the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Trends Report, which is out now.  I believe that this year’s trends show how insurers and their partners are reinventing themselves to support the evolving needs of their customers, intermediaries and employees.

The report gathers rich and diverse data from the hundreds of submissions received by the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards, an annual awards program that celebrates the wide range of innovations shaping the future of the industry, from smart, collaborative ecosystems to compelling uses of AI and more. From vaccination incentive programs to remote claims assessment solutions and AI-enabled health checks, this year’s awards showed clear trends in insurance innovation and illustrated how innovation