With Yinka Bolarinwa

Regulatory challenges (cont’d)

For insurance professionals with an eye on other industries, such as banking and financial services, this can be frustrating. “The insurance industry is significantly more regulated than the banking sector everywhere in the world,” said Edward Woods.

“Both banks and insurers could benefit from process improvement for their product life cycles (in particular through inception and launch},” continued Woods. ”

Insurers will very likely always be ‘slower’ than banks because of the more challenging products (e.g., adding the actuarial dimension to the product) and a more challenging regulatory environment.

 Updating Processes and Technology

Unfortunately, many insurers are stuck with rigid legacy systems not capable of supporting new product development. Rip and replace is an expensive proposition, so new technologies must be integrated to power modern product development demands.

Insurance companies must be able to track a new product through its various stages, ensure appropriate input is received, measure the time-to-market for a new product, and produce management reports to improve accountability.

Utilizing an enterprise-wide solution to automate product development and electronically handle all information related to a regulatory filing provides a competitive advantage.

This type of solution eases speed-to-market and compliance woes by providing a centralized repository for all information related to a regulatory filing, including forms, documents and activity history.

Workflow-driven processes can virtually eliminate errors and omissions by ensuring that all required parties have reviewed the documents prior to sign-off.

The payoff

There are benefits to a streamlined product development and filings process for insurance companies and customers as well.

For insurance companies, the most significant benefits include increased speed-to-market, reduced costs, improved accountability for compliance through a defined audit trail, and business process improvements that stem from efficiencies created when the product development process is automated.

The benefits for customers include access to the newest products in the marketplace that reflect market and world changes, demographic changes, and consumer needs offered at competitive prices.

Increased revenue opportunities is another benefit of getting products to market faster. Additional benefits include increased product integrity through a wide range of immediate, accurate management reports and status updates and streamlined market conduct audits.

According to Trotter, “The first insurer to market with a new product can gain an important competitive advantage.”

I want to conclude by saying in spite of the challenges, Nigerian insurance companies are slowly realizing the benefits of innovative product development.

However, Harris-Ferrante of Gartner noted that without a clear strategy and process discipline, few insurers will truly achieve product innovation. Getting innovative with product development will enable insurance companies achieve true speed-to-market.

Yinka Bolarinwa is Managing Director/CEO of Law Union & Rock Insurance Plc.
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