Multi-dimensional platforms

Our increasingly data-rich world is moving quickly into an era of remote hosting. Our music, emails, photos, calendars and other documents and files are all easily stored in the cloud for instant access anywhere on almost any device. This flexibility is hugely convenient in our personal lives, and this principle is being adopted more and more in the workplace, too. The insurance market is no exception, given the growth in both data and analytics to build a more complete picture of risk at both an aggregated and personal level.

It's therefore no surprise that, from efficiency to transparency, remote hosting technologies and multi-dimensional applications are improving how insurers work. In a study last year, 85% of insurers said that software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology core applications have had a positive impact on their business by improving service quality, response time and availability post-deployment.[1]

The property insurance market is perhaps seeing some of the most innovative developments in multi-dimensional applications. Data analysation and visualisation enabled by multi-dimensional applications in a SaaS environment, makes it much easier for a home or commercial property underwriter to detect or extract useful information from complex data. Even more, it helps determine the risk and make informed underwriting decisions based on this graphical information.

New products now available can provide property insurers with real-time visibility into their policy accumulations, perils risk data, live quotations and claims history across their entire book of business. This allows the insurer to accurately assess risk for individual properties at the point of sale - by having all the information required to make sound underwriting decisions in one place.

Without these types of applications, the ability to leverage the growing number of data sources that are helpful to the insurance sector, and inform the risk assessment process, would be stymied. SaaS-based applications allow insurers to keep all their data in one easily accessible location and format, allowing them to take a standardised approach to risk selection and adapt to changing market conditions, consumer demand and regulation. With better visibility and insight into property risks, enabling more sophisticated risk selection, home and commercial insurers can better manage their underwriting performance and profitability.

As some insurers may know through bitter experience, the cost and time involved in upgrading systems is not insignificant. However, this needs to be balanced against maintaining existing legacy systems. This can take a large chunk of their budget and have a massive knock-on impact on their ability to invest in more efficient systems and other innovations that can benefit both the company and the end customer.

Data visualisation tools combined with remote hosting technology can be invaluable to both home and commercial property insurers, providing they step onto the right platform. Flexibility is key - you need the ability to add additional data sources in the future and analyse the resulting information in the most convenient and meaningful way that will enable sound decisions to be made. Working on this basis, insurers can make the most of the technology's potential and justify the initial cost of implementation. In other words, some short-term pain for long-term gain.