Embrace digital disruption
Transforming insurance through digital product management
The insurance industry is still in the early stages of digitization, with an estimated 80 percent of direct written premiums in the U.S. still running on legacy systems. However, there is significant opportunity to leverage data, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and modern product management approaches to drive innovation and improve customer experiences.
Adopting an agile, product-centric mindset is critical, with dedicated product teams empowered to define objectives and key results (OKR) that align to business outcomes. Bringing new digital products to market requires rethinking how products are envisioned, built, and delivered. Here, an agile, customer-centric mindset focused on rapidly testing assumptions and iterating based on feedback can accelerate go to market efforts.
Given how insurers are shifting to digital products, a lot of carriers have rightfully moved toward more agile approaches.
Alissa Ristic
Advisory Managing Director, C&O Financial, KPMG LLP
Overcoming roadblocks to digital product implementation
Implementing successful digital products requires overcoming several key challenges:
1
2
3
4
5
Measuring success and driving accountability
Establishing clear OKRs empowers product teams to align their work with top-level company goals. However, senior leadership involvement in setting team-level OKRs can undermine accountability if teams do not feel ownership over the metrics. Defining a directly responsible individual (DRI) who is accountable for making decisions at the product team level is critical. This avoids inefficient escalation of product decisions and restores the team's sense of responsibility for delivering against their OKRs.
Aligning individuals working on a product line under a consistent set of performance metrics prevents fragmentation and relinquishing of accountability. When team members have different measurements, it becomes challenging to align on what it means to test, learn, fail and iterate. Bringing in HR from the start helps manage the shift to new performance management approaches that accommodate more frequent pivots based on market feedback.
Establishing clear swim lanes between business and product roles avoids overstepping and confusion. Collaboration is essential, but the business should focus on articulating challenges and desired outcomes, while product figures out system design and workflows to deliver those outcomes. Enforcing this separation allows each group to concentrate on their strengths.
Human resources, consistent team metrics, and defined swim lanes enable product teams to embrace an iterative, test-and-learn mindset without fear of perceived failure impacting performance reviews. This accountability empowers teams to rapidly validate assumptions and pivot based on real user needs.
Bringing HR in at the start helps manage the shift to new performance management approaches that demand more frequent pivots based on market feedback.
Max W Taffel
Managing Director, Managed Services, KPMG US
Kickstarting your digital product journey
The insurance industry is at an inflection point when it comes to digital transformation and product management. While rich with data, much of it remains trapped in legacy systems and manual processes. Bringing new digital products to market requires rethinking how products are envisioned, built, and delivered. An agile, customer-centric mindset focused on rapidly testing assumptions and iterating based on feedback is critical. This means embracing failure as a natural part of the process rather than fearing it.
Cross-functional talent with the right modern product management skills is essential for executing this new approach. While industry expertise is valuable, an outsider perspective can be an advantage in challenging assumptions. Top talent should be deployed not just on customer-facing products, but also on critical horizontal platform capabilities. Insurtechs can partner with incumbents, integrating with rich data assets to enable innovative distribution models while navigating regulations. Involving compliance stakeholders earlier in the product development process can smooth approvals later.
Explore more
Event
37th Annual Insurance Industry Conference
Navigating the (un)Known
Insight
Experience payoffs: How to deliver successful customer experience
The insurance industry has been making strides toward embracing a digital-first approach.
Insight
Top of mind insurance industry issues
Gain insights from KPMG on the issues that are top-of-mind for the insurance industry.
Meet our team
