Wearable Devices in Insurance

Nearly two-thirds of insurers expect wearable technologies to have a significant impact on the industry.

According to a survey in Accenture’s annual Technology Vision report, where more than 200 insurance executives across nine countries responded, 63 percent believe that wearable technologies will be adopted broadly by the insurance industry within the next two years. Nearly one-third (31 percent) said they are already using wearables to engage customers, employees or partners.

The report, “Accenture Technology Vision for Insurance 2015 — Digital Insurance Era: Stretch Your Boundaries,” highlights emerging developments in IT that will have a great impact on the industry in the next three to five years.

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of insurers said that providing a personalized customer experience is one of their top three priorities within the organization, and half (50 percent) claim to already see a positive return from their investment in personalized technologies.

“While insurers have traditionally based their underwriting and pricing processes on a limited view of certain customer variables, emerging technologies such as wearables and other connected devices can help insurers break from their traditional business models and provide outcome-based services for their customers,” said John Cusano, senior managing director of Accenture’s global Insurance practice.

For example, John Hancock recently began providing new policyholders with a free fitness band to track their health progress — and then reward their healthy living with a reduction in life insurance premiums.

However access to large volumes of new data is also causing insurers some challenges. The survey found that most insurers struggle to fully use their existing data. More than half (56 percent) said that managing data is “extremely” or “very challenging” considering the changes in volume, variety and velocity. Nearly nine in 10 respondents (86 percent) said they believe that software intelligence will be integral to simplifying their IT function.

The Accenture report says that as the “intelligent enterprise” is making machines smarter and embedding software intelligence into every aspect of its business, these machines can help insurers get more value out of the scale of information in big data and discover associations among the data that an individual might not be able to make.

Thomas Meyer, managing director of Accenture’s Insurance practice in Europe, Africa and Latin America, said insurers will benefit from human and technology collaboration, “with workers leveraging new technologies such as wearables to augment their abilities and help them make better decisions.”

Topics Carriers