"Brokers, now is the time to get digital”. That’s the message Brokerslink sent to our network when we introduced our new B.tech programme earlier this year, the first of its kind for a broker network.
InsurTechs are one of the fastest growing segments of the insurance market. Across the world we’re seeing strong investment in companies who aim to transform the way we transact insurance, and the ways in which we interact with our customers.
I think it’s fair to say that brokers have often been slightly behind the rest of the industry when it comes to digital transformation. We’ve successfully placed business on our paper or Excel-based systems for decades, it works, and we’ve grown up with these processes. However, over the last three years, these practices are starting to look dated. The pandemic was a massive driver for digital transformation as we were forced to work from home and found that the systems we were using were unable to cope.
We’re also seeing the next generation of consumers, Gen Z starting to buy insurance. This generation is used to living their lives online, and they need their insurance arrangements to mirror this. They want smooth, online customer journeys, minimal touchpoints and instant support at a time and place convenient to them.
Brokers know they need to digitise fast, but many may not know where to start, or the type of companies they need to work with to achieve their aims.
B.tech to the rescue
This was the problem we wanted to address when we launched our B.tech programme. We wanted to gather together some of the most innovative technology companies in the market and bring them into the Brokerslink community as affiliates to inspire, educate and accelerate the digital transformation of our broker and guide them to the best solutions for their customers.
It was our goal to facilitate digital transformation for our community, with light-touch support for brokers who are further ahead on their digital journey, and more in-depth support for those who are just starting out.
Since the launch of the programme, we have welcomed 7 specialised technology affiliates: BWD, Innovagency, Inovretail, IT Power, Kynd, Lightico and Uncharted – each with a mission to enhance brokers’ digital propositions.
Delivering digital development
So far, the feedback from our network has been fantastic. We ran our first Tech Hub at this year’s global conference in Porto, allowing our technology affiliates to exhibit and demonstrate how they can help brokers to transform. They received great interest from our community and we’re already seeing some strong new partnerships being built across the network.
A couple of our new affiliates have already hosted exclusive webinars for our partners and affiliates, showcasing their solutions and giving comprehensive overviews of how they could help the network to digitise.
Into 2023
The need to innovate has never been greater. As we look ahead to 2023, we are committed to building out the breadth of technology expertise within Brokerslink. We will be adding more tech affiliates to the network, each will be carefully chosen based on the type of solutions they can provide to add value to our partners and affiliates.
We’ve worked closely with our network to understand the areas they would most benefit from support in. We’ve also collaborated with brokers further on in their digitisation journey to learn what works for them and consider how we can apply those learnings for others. Based on these discussions there are a several priorities for us to explore including chatbot technology, and auto-response solutions.
Looking across the wider market, there are several areas that I expect to make a huge difference to brokers in 2023:
- E-signatures and digital contract – speeding up the exchanging of information between parties
- Increasingly digitalized customer journeys
- Technology to support the placement of both local and global programmes, bringing all information brokers need into one centralised location, this is what we’re doing with our Space.B platform
2023 is going to be an exciting year for Brokerslink and our partners and affiliates, and I’m looking forward to support more and more on their digital transformation journeys in the months to come!
