Insurance Nexus
Ahead of Connected Insurance Europe 2019, conference organiser Graham Proud of Insurance Nexus discusses the motivation behind the event and how it serves as an important tool for both Europe’s big insurers and up-and-coming startups
After three successful years in London, the Connected Insurance Europe conference has moved to Amsterdam for its 2019 edition. Taking place between 15 and 16 May, the conference, organised by research and events organisation Insurance Nexus, is engineered as a place for some of the European insurance industry’s big guns to meet, identify some of the market’s latest opportunities and examine how innovative new products can benefit not only their current customer base, but also the next generation of customers and provide what they require.
More than 350 delegates are expected at the event, which functions as a meeting place for major insurers and insurtech companies. The core of the conference is based around new services and development, examining the solutions that the insurtech community can provide insurers to improve their current portfolios through new technologies and partnerships. The organisers pride themselves on the number of major insurers in attendance, and on the high proportion of “decision makers” at the event (95 percent of attendees, according to Insurance Nexus).
We spoke to Graham Proud, head of European project delivery at Insurance Nexus, about the event, what it will offer, and why it can serve as a catalyst for innovation.
What are the key themes of the conference this year?
We are looking at how insurers are maximising the latest market opportunities in terms of delivering on what modern customers want. This means bringing innovative ideas into their products and services and bringing them to maturity. Another focus is the methods that insurers are using to communicate the value of those new products and services to their customer base, including effective marketing and increased engagement with the customers.
What sets this conference apart?
When I look at the insurance conference landscape, there’s a lot around insurtech at the moment and a lot of exhibitions based around startups. I think what sets us apart is that we’ve built an agenda for the incumbent and established insurers in terms of what they’re working on. We champion insurers taking the lead in partnerships with the insurtech community (without undermining them), and we have reflected that in terms of the speakers and attendees, it’s really recognisable names, rather than a whole room of young insurtech companies. We want the perfect blend so that the talent is all in the same room.
What inspired the move from London to Amsterdam?
I think what we wanted to do was not become too reliant on being a UK-centric event where it is essentially UK attendees and insurers speaking. There is a lot going on in Europe, and since the move to Amsterdam, we have seen a huge response from the German and Nordic markets, as well as France, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
We wanted to mix up the conversations on site and get more varied responses and feedback on how the insurers are turning their innovation into reality. We believe that by opening it up to a genuine pan-European audience, we could host insurers that have different regional challenges and expertise sets, so that when they benchmark what they’re doing against each other, they’ll find more value in looking across the whole European market rather than something, which is too UK-reliant.
What are the programme highlights?
We’ve got a senior speaking set, including the CEO of MAPFRE, Leire Jimenez. We have great representation from Zurich this year, including their global head of life business who is looking at how cross-departmental collaboration is improving Zurich’s offerings. Also speaking is Zurich’s global head of customer insight, to provide a lookat customer feedback and profiling the customer.
Additionally, we have Peter Stockhammer, the managing director of Generali Vitality, who have run a fantastic health proposition. Stockhammer will be talking about the whole journey of Generali Vitality and how they have implemented a programme of digitalisation and created a new ecosystem internally in order to serve the technology-savvy millennial customers.
From the claims departments, we have the head of Central Europe from AIG, as well as the head of claims from Achmea, who are talking about how their claims’ functions change through these connective technologies. Overall, we have around 30 or 40 major insurers speaking as part of the programme, so there’s lots going on.
How does the conference appeal to the alternative risk market?
As part of the discussion around new products and services, we very much encourage the risk and underwriting teams to be part of that conversation. We’re looking at all of the factors around underwriting, risk, pricing and actuarial departments: what is their impact on what new products and services should look like; how does risk analysis and the pricing side affect what those products and services should look like? So these parties are really essential to a major theme in the event around product development.
On a personal level, what are you most looking forward to about the conference?
I’m looking forward to hearing from some of Europe’s biggest insurers. We have 15 or so out of the top 20 grossing insurers in Europe. I’m really looking forward to hearing how they are setting out their future plans in terms of remaining relevant, really capturing new markets; providing that plan of how they are responding to innovation, and proving themselves to be the market leaders in what is a really competitive market.
There are lots of co-creation projects and partnerships with some of the new insurtechs and players, but we are looking forward to hearing how the established players plan to remain absolutely relevant in the coming years by changing things up now.
Do you have a final message for our readers about the conference?
What is really exciting about this is that it’s genuinely pan-European. There are major insurers from all over Europe, and what we’re pushing them to present in Amsterdam is future plans for how insurers can remain relevant, capture new markets, build really good partnerships and move with the times. So it’s a very forward-thinking conference, one where the major insurers are encouraged to divulge their long term plans in an environment which is not vendor-driven at all, but a conference which is made for insurers and made with the consultation of the insurers as well.
