Top Performing Carriers Led the Pack in Digitally Mature Capabilities
Pearl River, NY, February 11, 2021 – ACORD, the global standards-setting body for the insurance industry, today released its 2021 US Property & Casualty (P&C) Value Creation Study, which measured and analyzed value creation among the top 100 US P&C insurance carriers over a 20-year period. The study leveraged in-depth financial analysis, data-driven research and interviews with industry leaders to answer key questions about carrier performance and the strategies and capabilities that support success.
The top 100 P&C insurers generated a total of $446 billion in value over the 20 years studied, with ACORD analyzing the value created and destroyed through both underwriting and investment operations. The study found that more than half of value-creating insurers did so through investment income alone, depending on this revenue to offset poor underwriting results. It then focused on the insurers identified as “Sustainable Value Creators” – those who generated excess cash flow through both underwriting and investment – in order to uncover the strategies, tactics, and capabilities that lead to high performance.
“The twenty-year performance of the insurance industry as a whole speaks to its strength and economic importance,” said Bill Pieroni, President & CEO of ACORD. “However, it’s not just a question of the bottom line on the income statement. Sustainable value creation is driven by core competence in underwriting and claims. Top-performing insurers increasingly leveraged digital capabilities to supported improved outcomes in these areas.”
Key value levers common among Sustained Value Creators included:
- Underwriting: These carriers leveraged their informational scale, collecting data and applying advanced analytics, to generate deep insights to guide their acquisition, retention and cross-selling efforts with the goal of targeting the right customer. They coupled digital technology with entrenched technical expertise in order to deliver insight to the right touchpoints in real time, at the moment of value; to effectively manage overhead; and to drive behavior-based change across the organization.
- Claims Management: The application of digital capabilities to enhance productivity was also a key differentiator here in achieving a balance between loss payments and adjustment expenses while maintaining customer satisfaction. This was accomplished through the heavy application of technology, automating where it made sense while leveraging data and insights across the claims value chain.
- Customer Lifetime Value: The ability to align sales and service delivery with both customer expectations and customer lifetime value potential was another driver of value creation. Here again, technology, data and analytics play a key role. Winning carriers were able to leverage traditional and emerging sales and service channel options guided by insights into customer expectations and behaviors developed and delivered in real time.
“Increased alignment across strategic intent, digital capabilities, and resource allocation is the key differentiating factor separating sustainable value creators from the market," Pieroni added. "We are finally seeing the true impact of decades of thoughtful technology investment on performance.”
The full ACORD 2021 US P&C Value Creation white paper is free to download for ACORD members. For more information or to download the white paper, please visit www.acord.org/research.