In recent years there has been a lot of talk about Analytics and Big Data and yet, although expectations are high, the vast majority of Dutch insurers have not yet fully embraced Analytics and its capabilities.
Despite the strong growth in data and its importance, only 9% of insurers treat data as a strategic asset. More shockingly, over 80% of insurers consider themselves unable to differentiate from their competitors through the use of Analytics.
4 ways Dutch insurers are currently leveraging Analytics
Fortunately the results from Accenture’s recent research among the largest insurers in the Netherlands show that although the use of analytics may not be extensive at present, the commitment to Analytics is striking. More than three out of four insurers have clear ambitions to increase their investments in Analytics in the coming years.
What we’re seeing in the insurance industry today is that Analytics is primarily used for four main purposes: monitoring online behavior of (potential) customers, to calculate or predict the required reservations and price optimization, and campaign management purposes. Other applications from which insurers are expecting to gain much benefit, once Analytics is fully embedded in their organization, are: claim preventions, cross – and upselling, risk assessments and creating insights from unstructured data.
However, for now, the lack of quality data, knowledge and resources are withholding insurers from successfully embedding Analytics in their systems and processes.
Top challenges for embedding Analytics enterprise-wide
What challenges are Dutch insurers facing on the road to successfully embedding Analytics in their organization, and reap the benefits of the mountain of data they are sitting on?
The main barriers to deploy enterprise-wide Analytics is the required investment in terms of getting the needed budgets and the faced technological limitations because many insurers are struggling to keep pace with the latest technologies to deploy Analytics. Another big barrier is the quality of the data, which partly is the result of the lack of treating data as a strategic asset and therefore lack of active data management. The fourth barrier is the Analytics capacity gap. Currently only 23% of the Dutch insurers pay explicit attention to recruiting talented analysts. With the growing importance of Analytics and Big data, more than half of insurers have the ambition to recruit and assign a special Analytics unit within their workforce.
With 85% of Dutch Insurers having the ambition to excel in Analytics within 3 years, it’s important to take action now. In order to keep ahead of the competition insurers need to treat Data as a strategic asset, in which collecting more data points makes it easier to discern trends, patterns, opportunities, and effectively define the strategic direction of the enterprise.
This blog post is written in cooperation with Jurgen Wildvank and Dennis Ploegmakers, Management Consultants at Accenture. To get a copy of the research or for more information, please comment below or contact jurgen.wildvank@accenture.com.