Covid-19 Accelerates Technology Growth in Insurance Space

Amidst the Covid19 pandemic, insurers have speeded up the use of technology and advanced mobile apps. They also anticipate the growth of technology to continue as the health crisis passes. One of the main reasons for this growth is driven by the social distancing measures and quarantines that accompanied the pandemic, while adoption of other technologies came despite it.

Edin Imsirovic, an associate director at insurance rating firm AM Best, said market pressure from the pandemic advanced innovation by a couple of years or so.”Digitization in the insurance space sort of really accelerated this year due to COVID,” Imsirovic said in an interview.

That might accurately describe some advances such as communicating virtually with policyholders, said Serge Gagarin, manager of segment marketing at catastrophe risk modeling firm AIR Worldwide. But “large-scale systems integration projects,” big projects insurers might be undertaking, are developing independently of the pandemic, he said.

Over the years, the growth and adoption of technology hasn’t always been a priority in the insurance industry. “We’re a slow industry to adopt things sometimes, I dare say,” said Don Griffin, vice president of personal lines for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association. With the adoption of technology the industry is now able to predict the severity of events and for claims handling.

Though the use of the technology was increasing before the pandemic, but it accelerated during quarantines for claims handling, experts say. This modeling gives agents an idea of how strong damage was at a location, said Tom Larsen, principal of industry solutions at CoreLogic. “Weather forensics” determine what happened at a specific location rather than half a mile away.