THE NEXT LEAP: WHERE COULD TECHNOLOGY TAKE THE INDUSTRY?
“WE’VE SEEN TWO YEARS’ WORTH OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN TWO MONTHS.”
Technology an of insur
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
“THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE WERE GOING TO BE DOING IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS ARE BEING ACCELERATED BECAUSE EVERYTHING ELSE IS REALLY UNCERTAIN.” Jaime Swindle, MD of Networks and Products
THAT WAS THEN: THE GAPS
We caught up with MD of Networks and Products, Jaime Swindle, Head of Group IT, Richard King, and Systems Consultancy Manager, Carl Chapman, to talk about the challenges, changes and possibilities of working “smarter”.
REMOTE WORKING CAPABILITIES
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING VOIDS
“Quite of lot of brokers hadn’t even thought about having their operators working with laptops,” noted Carl.
Pre-COVID-19 remote working didn’t feature in many business continuity plans. This proved a big hurdle for some insurers, as Jaime explained, “You never imagine there will be anywhere you can’t go. This proved a challenge in enabling live chat or getting some of the technology-driven centres up and running, because most people’s plans assume you have a back-up site that you can go to. Having people sitting in their homes and being able to maintain business as usual is really difficult.”
Richard agreed that it was a wake-up call for a number of brokers, “Remote VPN set up was a first for a lot of Members. They were so office-centric it wasn’t even a consideration. COVID-19 has moved the conversation on very quickly in terms of IT. People have realised they need to invest and if they’ve not been investing it comes as a bit of a shock.”
OFFSHORE RELIANCE “The impact of lockdown in countries, such as India, where a huge amount of outsourcing was taking place, resulted in the need to bring that work back onshore – it is very likely that this will not go back to anywhere near the scale it was previously and there will be an accelerated drive to even more automation,” Jaime commented.
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While the tools and software adopted in the past few months may be new to some, these are technologies which have been around for some time. And, having taken the plunge and formed new digital habits, it’s clear that the technological capabilities we’ve now become accustomed to are just the tip of the iceberg.
OUR
Voice
