Insurance Challenge Provides Low-Risk Platform for Innovation

Published Sep-12-16

Breakthrough:
A technology that gives claimants more control over the insurance claims process is one of the winners of an insurance innovation challenge.

Company:
ACORD, United States

The Story:

The insurance industry, like many others needs to innovate for a multitude of reasons - to do things better, for economic growth, for survival, for better returns, to take advantage of opportunities and much more.

Recognizing this need, ACORD, a leading global data standards and services association in the insurance industry launched an open innovation competition in the United States for novel ideas and technologies to transform the way the industry does business. The challenge lays claim to being the first of its kind in the insurance industry.

A Low-Risk Way to Innovate

The ACORD Innovation Challenge is part of ACORD's ongoing push to promote innovation within the industry and within itself. As part of its 20/20 process to help shape the future of insurance, executives involved themselves in numerous discussions and spoke to many within the industry at conferences, forums and other public meetings.

What they were hearing consistently, particularly from the vendor community was that there's not enough innovation, because it is high-risk and expensive. The challenge evolved from these discussions, a platform where people can test out ideas without suffering any of the usual consequences of failure.

The Challenge Gets Underway

The initial call for proposals went out in February 2015 and by the May deadline, more than 100 entries had been submitted. A month later, about 60 people came to ACORD's headquarters to pitch their ideas and technologies in person.
During the first round each contest gave a 10-minute pitch in front of a panel of judges who then selected 12 finalists.

Bill Hartnett, head of Innovation for ACORD told 'Insurance Journal': “It’s ‘Shark Tank’ meets tech crunch environment. It’s a true pitch competition. It’s not a sales pitch competition. It’s like, ‘Here’s my idea; here’s the problem that I see in the industry; here’s my solution. Here is how I think I can change the world of insurance.'"

One month later, the finalists delivered live pitches at an ACORD conference in Boca Raton, Florida. Judges and audience members ranked the ideas on such criteria as ingenuity, applicability to insurance and potential impact for the industry.

Winners

Ultimately, two winners were selected, each receiving a prize package of $25,000.
The winner of the insurance disruptor category was Livegenic for its Real-Time Guidance for Claims product. This puts a lot of the control of the insurance claim adjustment process in the hands of claimants. They use live video, audio and photographs to allow insurers to see what they're seeing, removing the need for an adjuster to make a site visit. It aims to speed up the claims process and minimize fraud related risks.

The winner of the ACORD innovator category was Insurity for a product that is designed to improve information availability and integrity, eliminating many challenges insurers make in the data conversion process.

The Future

ACORD is keeping the innovation momentum going with a second challenge in 2016 that’s expanding domestically and globally.

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