Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Following the motto of “Insurance 2020 – Business Transformation Accelerated”, msg hosted its first virtual inscomTALK. High-profile insurance experts made guest appearances at the studio and provided answers and explanations during a Q&A session. The event was broadcast to viewers from 14 countries via live stream. The inscomTALK addressed the issues of ecosystems and platforms, innovation management, health ecosystems and compliance.

Host Cristián Gálvez and msg board member Bernhard Lang led the event, passing on questions from participants to the guest speakers and hosting smaller live polls with the audience. “We were very touched by the interaction with our viewers. Even if we cannot get together in person, it is still very important to facilitate direct communication, especially in these turbulent times,” explained Bernhard Lang, while also emphasizing the benefits of a virtual conference. “It is actually much easier for our partners and customers located abroad to participate in a virtual event than to have to travel to Munich.”

The impact of the corona crisis on society and insurance companies was a key topic of the discussion session. During a brief keynote speech, futurologist and trend researcher Matthias Horx took a look at some of the fundamental changes which are triggered by an extreme crisis. “Most people do not even want to go back to how things were before the crisis,” he commented. The audience’s opinion on the topic of changes resulting from the coronavirus was also very clear: A live vote by participants during the event showed that almost 55% considered the impact the crisis is having on digitalization to be “significant”.

What the impact on mobility might be was then discussed by Bernhard Lang with the first guest Karsten Crede, CEO of ERGO Mobility Solutions. Crede was confident the German economy still held considerable potential to create cross-industry platforms. However, he did emphasize during the discussion that product offerings would have to focus directly on customer needs in order to be successful. With his second guest, Sebastian Pitzler, Lang discussed the current situation innovation labs were facing. Despite the current crisis, Pitzler was able to provide some reassurance: InsurLab Germany’s portfolio was being well received in the industry and insurtechs were just as important as before.

Joining the event via a live connection, msg board member Rolf Kranz was able to confirm that fact and provide insight into msg’s insurance strategy. Innovation and collaborations with network partners would continue to be very important going forward. msg hoped to support the healthcare sector even further in the future with digital health offers. To that end, a new business division was even being created within the company.

Trending questions on the topic of healthcare were answered by the third guest, Timm Schindler, in an interview with Bernhard Lang. As a program manager for AOK Plus, Schindler is already well-versed in what it means to create a healthcare platform. Schindler pointed out that insurance companies want to act as digital enablers, not interfere in the relationship between physicians and patients.

Andreas Schönherr, Managing Director of Swiss Re then answered trending questions on the topic of compliance. The results from a vote held amongst the inscomTALK audience confirmed what experts in recent years have observed. Compliance is becoming more widely recognized as a management tool for effective enterprise management. There is, at the very least, a definite trend in that direction.

The insurance industry is constantly being subjected to major changes and must continuously adapt. That the industry can successfully do so during a global crisis like the corona pandemic is something the experts agreed on.

A recording of the full event can be viewed here.