How Insurtech Vanguards Can Boost Your AM Best Innovation Assessment Score

Innovation is a hot-ticket item for insurers. But, how do insurers change their focus from isolated innovation to delivering long-term value for the entire organization? In an effort to quantify innovation, AM Best released in March 2020 Scoring and Assessing Innovation, formal criteria and evaluation for measuring insurers’ innovation. Two years later in 2022, they released a report about how insurers are doing with innovation, Insurers Leverage Innovation for Financial Strength. The report finds that insurers with clearly defined innovation initiatives have noticeably higher top-line growth. In particular, innovative insurers can more easily expand customer pools, while also fine-tuning risk selection.

At Guidewire Connections 2022, AM Best and Encova Insurance shared tips and tricks on how to maximize and quantify an insurer’s AM Best Innovation Assessment. One actionable approach is engaging in partnerships with insurtechs and technology firms. Encova Insurance adopted a responsive innovation ecosystem to avoid innovation theater, or innovation for innovation’s sake. Within their strategic planning framework, one initiative is to integrate Insurtech digital solutions to align customer appetite with products and services. They choose their innovation partners based on existing business strategies, which makes them measurable. 

But, sifting through the insurtech noise can be overwhelming. Many factors exist including: How will the insurtech play in my existing technology landscape? How can I ensure measurable success? Embarking on a new innovation strategy with an insurtech can be risky.  But, Guidewire’s Insurtech Vanguard program helps insurers learn about the hottest-new insurtechs — and how to leverage them — faster and easier than ever before. Guidewire does the heavy lifting by scouting the next generation of insurance innovation by identifying and incubating potential new members.  Here are a few examples:

Clearspeed Technology is a new fraud detection solution using a light touch, automated voice questionnaire that quickly and accurately assesses fraud risk during the claims process.  

For insurers, using AI to make high impact or consequential business decisions, Monitaur provides software that delivers responsible and ethical model governance from policy to proof. 

Additionally, Nauto’s real time AI-powered vehicle safety solution automatically helps drivers prevent collisions and reduce risky driving behaviors, while the first notice of loss, with sensor data and video, assists in claims triage and fraud detection.

When planning your innovation initiatives, you focus on developing an innovation culture and a portfolio of innovation projects, but let Guidewire help by vetting the tried and trusted technology firms.

Find out more at Guidewire.com. Want to hear more stories of insurance innovation? Register for Connections, November 12-15, 2023 at Gaylord Opryland, Nashville.