How can insurance organizations successfully collaborate with InsurTech Startups to accelerate innovation?
While an increasing number of organizations are investing in these collaborations, the success of these initiatives is fairly low. We know that there are many insights large organizations can gain from InsurTech startups, and our most recent Sprint aimed to create a long-term win-win solution for both groups.
Over the first two days of the project, the team focused on empathizing with both sides. The team interviewed a corporate Mastermind and 3 InsurTech Startups, and each innovator brought their own experience of working with Startups to the project. Through these interviews, the team discovered many pain points for Startups, as shown below.
During the interview analysis, the team realized that all of the Startups frequently spoke about one pain point – the issue of time wastage. As one Founder shared, “It can often take 1 month between the first email request for a meeting and the actual in-person meeting”. Some of the reasons cited for this issue were
1) Not being connected to the right person
2) Delayed responses
3) Bureaucracy, which required booking a meeting room instead of a phone call to communicate
On the third day, the team used the Design Thinking methodology to establish an empathy map, which helped them visualize the thoughts and feelings of these Startups. Equipped with this deeper understanding, they defined a persona – Betty, a recent graduate and InsurTech Startup Founder. The team mapped out Betty’s journey, where she attempted to connect and collaborate with large insurance organizations. Next, they created a “How Might We” statement: “How might we identify the right decision makers to speed up the process of collaboration, improving Betty’s experience?”
Within 5 minutes, the innovators produced 26 ideas for solutions to this challenge. Together, they decided on the winning solution – a dedicated committee of decision makers. This solution was further developed on the fourth day and presented to the community via an interactive presentation. The team invited the audience to share their insights through a poll after the presentation, which opened the floor for a discussion around the future of collaboration between InsurTech Startups and large insurance organizations.
A big thank-you to the participants, Masterminds, and community members for sharing their time with us during this exciting project!
As we continue our Virtual Events calendar into June, we would like to invite you to check out our upcoming trainings and events. These events are free for members of the re/insurance community, as part of our gift during these challenging times.
We look forward to seeing the community at our upcoming events as we continue to collaborate to #MakeInsuranceBetter!