PEARL RIVER, NY APRIL 24, 2017 – ACORD, a global, nonprofit organization serving the insurance and related industries, today announced findings from the ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study, which examines the top 100 global insurance carriers, assesses their digital maturity and compares it to their performance.
This is the first study conducted solely by ACORD’s Research & Development team. “We’re uniquely positioned with over 900 members globally,” said ACORD President & CEO Bill Pieroni. “I believe there is an opportunity to conduct provocative, insightful and actionable research that has no agenda beyond helping the industry. This was the motivation behind the digitization study, which includes a tremendous amount of actionable insight.”
For the purposes of this study, ACORD defined digitization as capabilities which rely on data, analytics, and communications technologies – not only in business processes and infrastructure, but also strategic intent. ACORD developed a proprietary methodology for evaluating each insurer’s relative level of digitization across several dimensions, and generated a quantitative score for each of the 100 carriers examined. As part of the analysis, ACORD also gathered and reviewed five years’ worth of operational data on each company, to examine performance relative to digital maturity.
“There’s been a lot of hype about digitization, but very little quantitative insight compelling carriers to actually implement it throughout their operating models,” Pieroni said. “The industry needed the application of rigorous research techniques to find out: are there measurable outcomes which warrant the cost, time, and risk associated with the digital journey?”
ACORD discovered that fewer than 40% of carriers have significantly digitized the insurance value chain. Nearly half of the insurers in the study are still in the early stages of exploring how digitization can be applied against their business model, while approximately 10% are not leveraging digital technologies at all within their current business processes.
The results of the analysis were clear: increasing levels of digitization do indeed drive material improvement in value creation. Insurers which have successfully digitized achieved twice as much growth in premiums and earnings as the average over the period studied, and the most digitally mature tier of carriers also saw their share prices double.
The study also looked at factors such as line of business, geographic reach, and branding, and how they relate to successful digitization – with interesting, and sometimes counterintuitive, results. The ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study white paper details these findings, as well as providing the business context around digitization issues, the common characteristics of the top value creators, and the execution imperatives around successful digitization.
The ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study white paper is free to download for ACORD members. For more information or to download the white paper, please visit www.acord.org.
About ACORD
ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is a global, nonprofit organization serving the insurance and related industries. ACORD facilitates fast, accurate data exchange and more efficient workflows through the development of electronic standards, standardized forms, and tools to support their use. ACORD members worldwide include hundreds of insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations, and industry associations. ACORD maintains offices in New York and London.