October 19, 2018
InsureTech Connect (ITC), the world’s largest gathering of insurance and technology innovators, took place October 1-3 in Las Vegas, and The Council was in attendance for the second year in a row. Check out our daily bytes from the conference here, here and here.
There were an amazing array of companies in attendance, creating a ton of kinetic energy. Over 6,000 attendees from approximately 1,700 companies attended ITC this year—doubling from 2017.
The breakdown? 36% insurtechs, 13% investors, 20% intermediaries (30+ Council member companies represented), 25% carriers and 7% consulting/research companies.
ITC is colorful and enlightening, but it’s necessary to cut through the noise. Here are a couple of key observations of interest to employee benefits brokers and consultants:
- ITC’s attendance and business program focus mostly on property/casualty versus health although companies such as Limelight Health, Flume Health and Vericred were notably participating.
- The commercial insurance conversations between attendees are heavily dominated by new and existing players attacking the small business opportunity via tech-enabled distribution platforms.
- The focus is two-fold: 1) provide small businesses an integrated shopping experience (e.g., seeing a renewed effort toward the “all-in-one” small business policy 2) reduce insurance providers’ cost of customer acquisition.
- AI, digital platforms and API usage were three common technology highlights by the carriers. Over the past year, there has been more of an accelerated effort to embed them in carrier processes than initially expected.
- It is evident that the dialogue around innovation is changing. As ITC Co-Founder and CEO Jay Weintraub put it, “the ship for disruption has sailed.” Instead, the emphasis is on partnerships and collaboration, which is a continuing trend from the 2017 ITC Conference.