From buzz to breakthrough

The latest Insurance News event explored what changing tech really means for the industry

By Miranda Maxwell

Wet weather did not dampen the enthusiasm as professionals met in Sydney for the Insurance News Beyond the Buzzwords conference, to hear the unadorned truth about what is and isn’t working in industry technology.

The July 30 event – organised with Insurtech Australia and backed by gold partner Instanda and event supporters Allianz and EXL – cut through the jargon to provide practical learnings, analysis and fresh ideas, direct from experts.

A pitch competition was won by IVAA, a jewellery validation insurtech that provides contents claim advice. Also selected to compete were e5 Workflow, uBind, Codafication and FreightInsure.

Insurance Council counter-fraud CEO Andrew Gill gave an update on undetected insurance scams. Criminals are quick and agile adopters of technology, he says, but industry is using the same tools to fight back.

And Sedgwick EGM Kimberley Daley told us technology is core to everything
the business does, and more than $US500 million is invested every year, speeding and simplifying claims handling.

Below are more of the key insights, in the experts’ own words:  

IAG chief information officer Tony Craddock 

We’re seeing broker expectations going up and up, and we are investing heavily … to make sure we can meet those.  

Agentic AI and MCP [model context protocol] are the most overused buzzwords. But that doesn’t mean they are not fundamentally important technologies and [they] actually are going to transform how we do things.

Over the years, insurers have grown through acquisition, and front-line staff would be the buffer between clunky old systems and the customers.

But 1980s or 1990s systems just don’t work in the digital world.  I don’t think we will see an end to transformation programs … underpinned by technology for the foreseeable future. With all the various versions of AI, we can really start focusing on what’s at the edge of capability.

QBE catastrophe research head Joanna Aldridge 

The next generation of catastrophe models redefine every part of the equation, tackling limitations that we’ve been living with for years.

These models … look at time – they can catch the year-to-year differences driven by climate patterns. We can get ahead of the curve before the season even starts.

This matters in reinsurance discussions, portfolio steering and underwriting decisions in high-risk regions.

Allianz chief tech officer James Fitzpatrick 

The pace of change – and being able to adapt – is actually the skill set I think people need: openness to adjust ways of working and think about what’s new.  

The number one problem we talk about is the ability to integrate. The new technology might do the thing it’s designed to do, but that’s not that helpful if it can’t talk to everything around it. It tends to be the hard part in terms of the economic case, of the time to market.

One of the things I hope we get with AI is reducing some of the cognitive load – how people have the feeling of “always on”. 

Suncorp chief information officer Mike Wood 

I’ve always been a tech nerd. In 1980 my father borrowed a ZX 80 computer. It taught me how to use resources really carefully and program with skill and efficiency.

My phone has 16 million times more memory, so things have moved on enormously.  

Customer expectations of all things digital has absolutely flowed into insurance. If you’re not keeping up and delivering experiences that gel with the rest of their life, you’re going to miss out.

AI is not a change that’s going to be created in some back room where we design the perfect process.

It’s going to be much more organic, where individuals become more capable of using AI tools and will start to augment their own roles.

That’s both very exciting and a little bit scary, and means we can’t truly know what the future will look like until it’s here. 

Upcover chief executive Skye Theodorou 

I strongly believe we need to automate 20% of what every team member does every six months … people should not be doing the same task they were doing three, six or 12 months ago.

We should be looking at new ways to service, new problems to solve, enhancing.

ICEYE vice-president Stephen Lathrope 

We are on the cusp of a whole load of technology themes coming together. We have advanced data analytics powered by AI doing some of the heavy lifting. We have geospatial data and understanding of location, which is so critical to understanding both risk and loss. We have huge computing power at our disposal enabling us to power all of that.

ICEYE can create enormous constellations that image Earth multiple times a day and get very close to persistent monitoring. It’s a convergence of new space technology with AI … machines deducing what is apparent on images and huge computing power coming together to give us something quite special. 

Kanopi chief executive Nigel Fellowes-Freeman 

Build versus buy comes out as a binary decision, but actually it’s probably more of a continuum, more of a bell curve of decision-making.  

The build argument will be risk … that we want control, to own the IP. In the buy narrative, you want speed or flexibility and … that ability to lean on a partner whose sole purpose is to build technology and enable your company to focus on what you’re good at.

Marsh head of digital trading Mark de Hosson

We will always consider cyber and data security. They’re critically important. We are in the risk business … therefore we take this very seriously. We have to have that lens across everything we do. 

Curium chief executive Tetiana George 

The technology is developing so quickly, nobody has a choice but to embrace it. It doesn’t matter what [regulators] APRA, ASIC or even insurers think, because people will go and do it.

Companies try to ban AI or restrict it … but what happens is the opposite – their employees go and use it elsewhere and you see breaches or privacy violations.

The moment you can save yourself two hours a day doing a report or analysis, even if your employer says no, the temptation is too big not to do it. This is the risk. 

Instanda chief revenue officer Derek Hill  

The world will not wait. When you think about the pace of change – the customer expectations, digital advancements – you have to be smart enough as a business to understand what capabilities you need to differentiate and how you get there.  

You need to be brave enough to stop the things that are not working and start the things that will get you to the target.