Life insurance is famous for adapting to changes slowly. For years, many of the challenges insurers face have been constants, and this is also true of 2024: competition for talent, preserving institutional expertise, managing technical debt, controlling costs, and meeting ever-rising consumer expectations for digital sales and transactions.
But some elements of the environment are new. Interest rates have once again been rising, creating complexity in an uncertain economic environment, and generative artificial intelligence (AI) powered by large language models (LLMs) offers a powerful new set of tools that may give insurers truly new ways to solve problems, do business, and satisfy customer needs.
In 2024, Datos Insights anticipates that insurers will continue their investment in IT and modernization efforts, while also taking advantage of new generative AI tools and API ecosystems to improve operational efficiencies, increase revenue, and enhance customer experience.
Here are some of the top trends Datos Insights sees impacting the L/A/B space in 2024:
- Distribution holds the power: To manage the challenges posed by the distribution power shift, carriers need to reinvent their partnerships with distribution intermediaries by establishing more trust and collaboration, providing support and training, and creating a more digital experience for agents.
- AI is live!: Generative AI holds the promise of allowing the L/A/B segment to catch up by impacting the areas of customer service, claims, account setup, and coding and testing.
- Customers and agents want the easy button: By providing the easy button that customers and agents want, life insurance carriers can not only overcome their challenges, but also create a competitive advantage by becoming the carrier of choice for agents and customers.
- Institutional knowledge is leaving the building: The talent gap in the life insurance industry is a serious challenge that requires carriers to transform their technology and proactively share the purposeful mission of insurance for its future success.
- APIs continue to provide value: With the growing number of insuretechs focusing on the L/A/B space, carriers will continue using APIs for a variety of use cases, including connecting legacy systems to new solutions, collecting information from IoT devices, and integrating with electronic health records.
To hear about the rest of the top 10 trends Datos Insights foresees impacting the L/A/B market in 2024, register for our webinar on January 11: Top 10 Trends in Life Insurance, Annuities, Benefits, 2024: New Tools and Opportunities, Ongoing Challenges, and Concerns. If you are unable to attend, read about these areas of the industry in our report Top 10 Trends in Life, Annuities, and Benefits, 2024.
