Rocky Mountains Insurance - Case Study - Innovatank Publishing

Authors: Jaime Pablo and Mohit Parmar

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              Rocky Mountain Insurance (Rocky Mountain) Is an international insurance and financial services provider that develops and sells insurance products such as health, life, travel, and mortgage policies. Rocky Mountain serves over 30 million customers worldwide, including individuals, and corporations that enroll employees in group benefit plans. Although Rocky Mountain has operations across North America, Asia, and Europe, it primarily focuses on the Canadian market.

              The insurance industry supply chain comprises reinsurers, direct insurers, insurance brokerage agencies, and end consumers. End consumers purchase insurance policies from insurance brokerage agencies and pay a monthly or yearly premium to maintain these policies. Insurance policies allow consumers to transfer their risk to insurance companies in exchange for premiums paid. Insurance brokerage agencies handle customer service, distribution, and lead generation for one or more direct insurance companies. Direct insurance companies, such as Rocky Mountain, create insurance policies for end consumers and assume the risk associated with these policies. If end consumers incur damages covered by their insurance policy, direct insurers are responsible for financial compensation. Direct insurers transfer part of the risk associated with insurance policies by buying insurance from reinsurers. Reinsurers provide direct insurers with financial assistance when an overwhelming amount of end consumers simultaneously require compensation.

              The insurance industry has historically been paper-based relying on manual input from underwriters and requiring many communication streams to assess and pay out insurance claims. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought forward new expectations for all companies from consumers to provide digital services and solutions that improve the ease of access and speed of services provided. With financial institutions, such as banks, leading the way for mobile banking and other digital services, the insurance industry has been trying to adapt to this new digital age as well. Rocky Mountain has noticed rival insurance companies have begun exploring ways to approach digital transformation to gain more customers with better experiences, and further improve profit margins, which have typically been thin in this industry. Alia Khan, Chief Technology Officer of Rocky Mountain, has proposed the following technologies and is asking for your input on which one should be prioritized and explored to help enhance Rocky Mountain’s digital presence and improve its products and services across the entire insurance supply chain:

• Artificial Intelligence – Improve customer experience through features such as chat bots
• Blockchain – improve security and transparency of information, provide smart contracts
• Omnichannel Experiences – Invest in digital and physical communication platforms for clients
• Internet of Things (IoT) – Help assess risk profiles by monitoring customers or companies
• Big Data – Better understand customers and develop predictive models

Your challenge is to develop an analysis on the company and industry and provide your thoughts on which technology should be prioritized and pursued by Rocky Mountain and explain how it can be used to enhance products and services.