Blog: The Frozen middle told to "Let it Go" to boost digital insurance innovation

You can read an extensive write up of the day's events here from the extensive DIS 2015 Live Blog.

But for those of you with less time on your hands, I have decided to summarise some of the key take homes from my perspective.

We need to defrost the Frozen Middle
As a father of a two year-old daughter not a week goes by without Disney's Frozen being watched at least once. This is relevant because as many of you with children will be aware, the big song number in the movie is called "Let it Go". And that is exactly what Markel's Darius Kumana said some industry stalwarts should be in order doing to embrace digital.

Indeed he described these people - typically with decades of experience at one firm in underwriting or claims - as the "Frozen Middle," although he did note that there was more of a decent acceptance of the digital agenda with new starters and senior staff, including board members. But that the bulk of insurance employees are reluctant to change things, having done them in a particular way for years.

The Chief Digital Officer is dead, long live ...
It was a shame RSA's Ian Hood had to pull out of the event as he might have been able to give a robust defence of his job title, but the second panel of the day was very sniffy about the role of chief digital officer.

Ian is one of a number of key figures - Andrew Brem at Aviva is another - who have been handed this title, but the likes of Guevara's CEO Kim Miller and Simply Business' head of marketing and communication Jasper Martens told delegates they thought actions spoke louder than words. In fact, they said just because an insurer has recruited a CDO it did not mean they were necessarily embracing the digital ethos.

This might be unfair on the likes of Aviva and RSA, but the feeling on the panel - which also included Markel's James Bowman and Pancentric's James Downes - was that these titles will be absorbed into more traditional titles within years.

Get out the hover boards, digital is going Back to the Future
It was interesting to hear Friendsurance co-founder and managing director Sebastian Herfurth compare his firm's social media-enabled business model with that of a 17th century village and how they protected their belongings.

Digital was certainly touted as an enabler to encourage more personal insurance interaction throughout the day, very much taking the market Back to the Future.

Indeed, James York from Worry + Peace even advocated insurance firms should launch tie-ups with coffee houses, a move which would see the London insurance market go full circle back to Lloyd's roots on Tower Street.

We are never going to compete with Google, so don't bother ...
The question about whether insurance should position itself as a digital leader or among those chasing the leaders was one that came up a number of times during the day.

Miller - a relative market outsider - induced some nods from delegates when he commented he could not understand the self-loathing that seemed to pervade the market, adding that if the industry did not believe in its products, why should consumers?

There was also a lot of discussion about what made a good digital culture, and that while getting rid of suits and ties was a start, this was merely cosmetic compared to other things firms could do.

However, speakers and panellists were broadly in agreement that it was no use trying to replicate Google's offices, or indeed try and make out insurance was in any way similar.

On the positive side though, the likes of Kumana told delegates he turned down other ‘sexier' sectors because he saw the potential for disruption and improvement in the insurance space, and Axa's Gordon Rutherford praised the work of the three teams involved in the event's Hackathon as an indication that insurance could be - if not number one - at least in the leading pack when it came to digital innovation.

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