Global Insurers Must Innovate Now…Or Pay The Price.

KPMG's Global CEO Outlook 2019 is a report based on a survey of 1,300 CEOs across 11 of the world's largest economies. Read on as we take a deeper dive into the key trends and hot topics impacting insurance organizations worldwide.

Agility builds resilience

Our report shows that insurance CEOs are confident in business growth over the next few years, yet fully recognize the need for change from within. From culture change and technology transformation, to workforce investment and greater customer focus, they are ready to embrace disruption, forge external partnerships as well as optimize agility and resilience as a means to develop holistic, flexible strategies that will pave the way to new opportunities and help overcome potential threats.

Despite a strong awareness of emerging risks, insurance CEOs appeared bullish on their near-term growth trajectory. Compared to moderate confidence in the global economy over the next three years (65%), they are highly confident in the growth of their industry (85%) and that of their own companies (97%). Such confidence in their organization's resilience can only be attributed to insurers' recent efforts to ramp up transformation initiatives.

Only the disruptive survive

Amid emerging threats, insurance CEOs are geared up to challenge and disrupt business norms.

A primary focus? Customer centricity.

64% of CEOs believe that they need to significantly improve their understanding of customers and elevate the end-to-end customer experience. By transforming their front, middle and back office functions, they will better understand their customers' current interaction with the organization as well as their everchanging expectations.

The power of cyber resilience

Improving cyber resilience can no longer be ignored. 74% of CEOs consider information security as both a strategic function and a source of competitive advantage, and 67% believe that cyber security is critical to building trust with key stakeholders. What's for certain is that a "cyber mindset" from the outset (product development, strategy and vision phases) is fundamental.

Putting innovation into action

Despite this enthusiasm for technology, a mere 14% of CEOs claim to have implemented AI in automating their processes!

Given the complexity of this new technology, and legacy technology challenges that insurers may face, this slow progress perhaps come as no surprise. AI is expected to be equally challenging for companies to incorporate, since it...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT