Just as fintechs have provoked a paradigm shift in the banking sector, insurance startups are revolutionising the insurance market, embracing the power of new technologies to offer more customer-centric services and products at more affordable prices than traditional insurance companies. Jordi Sánchez, head of the product team at 11Onze, explains what insurtechs are and how they work.

The unstoppable process of digitalisation is spreading rapidly to all sectors and has also reached the insurance business. The term insurtech comes from the conjunction of ‘insurance’ and ‘technology’. As Sánchez points out, “it is the fusion between the insurance sector and technological innovation strategies”, and continues, “it refers to all those insurance companies, both traditional and startups, that make use of information technology to generate solutions and new ways of offering their services and products to customers”.

They enter the market with a new value proposition focused on the convenience of interacting digitally, being more agile, and offering a better user experience. Unlike traditional companies, they concentrate their operations exclusively on electronic channels and are based on the use of new technologies from the outset. As the head of the product team explains, “IT techniques such as ‘machine learning’ and the use of ‘big data’ make it possible to create totally personalised products according to the needs of each individual or company”.

A change led by new generations

Digital natives, a term generally applied to all those who have been born and raised surrounded by the Internet, computers, and mobile phones, are spearheading a major change in the mentality of consumers, including insurance consumers.

New emerging business models, such as those based on social networks, the sharing economy, or personal branding, create needs that require more flexibility, agility, and less paperwork, challenges to which traditional insurance companies cannot always provide an adequate response.

Although no one can predict exactly what the insurance sector will be like in the future, there is no doubt that the traditional insurance sector has to adapt to the new trends based on digital technologies, formulating a strategy to develop attractive services, streamlining processes and reducing costs, if they do not want to be left behind in the face of a revolution that seems unstoppable.

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