You’ll find Joe Cannon in Seat 2A on Delta or American almost every week. As Core Solutions Sales Leader at Origami Risk, Joe travels all over the US to meet with P&C insurance executives and break bread with key partners to help insurers navigate the digital transformation of their businesses. By his calculation, he has flown over 200,000 miles since being hired at Origami 17 short months ago, in his effort to help transform insurance.  

Question: In your first year at Origami Risk, what is the main “pain point” you hear from P&C executives regarding technology and insurance?

Answer: The main concern P&C executives have is finding “affordable” tech solutions. Technology is not new to them. Over the past 20 years, many carriers have undergone a lengthy and costly investment in” modern” technology systems that dominated the market for the last two decades. It’s a ‘been there and done that” situation for them. They remember the bad old days when legacy systems were put in place. That was not easy, and it turned out to be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

So, when they say they are searching for “affordable” tech, what they really mean is they don’t think the cost estimates of leading tech vendors are realistic. They know from experience that they will be signing up for years of upgrading and updating technology.  Some P&C carriers we talk with today are still implementing ‘modern’ technology ten years later. Just think of that!

Question: How do the P&C executives respond to your conversations about Origami Risk's Core Insurance platform?

Answer: They are pleasantly surprised. The first advantage is Origami Risk’s single instance, multi-tenant true SaaS (software as a service) platform The core insurance processes software was designed in the cloud, it is maintained and updated in the cloud, and it is delivered from the cloud direct to insurers via a secure, cloud-based SaaS platform accessible from anywhere via web browsers, desktops, and mobile devices.

Origami Risk’s true SaaS platform is a subscription-based service. You don’t buy the software for streamlining core insurance processes. You subscribe to the software and following the initial project, Origami Risk does all the updating, upgrading, and maintenance as part of the subscription license.

The second advantage of Origami Risk’s SaaS platform is sharing. Sharing software is at the heart of true SaaS. All clients are on the same version of the software. Whether you are a large or small client, a new client or you have partnered with Origami Risk since our beginnings in 2009, all Origami Risk's clients benefit from a single version of the software. While the software is shared, it should be noted that each insured/tenant has its own database where data is kept totally separate and secure.

Another big advantage is that Origami Risk automatically updates, upgrades, and patches the software. You don’t have to maintain the software, lowering your total cost of ownership (TCO). Origami Risk does it all. And, I like to say that software updates are not disruptive because they are done on the weekends, outside of normal business hours.

Question: Do you think there’s a disconnect between what InsurTech companies say they offer and its impact on the insurance business?

Answer: I don’t know that it is a disconnect, but I think many InsurTechs and their investors underestimated the challenges associated with digital transformations. They didn’t realize the complexity of the P&C business, thus underestimating the actual costs of designing and updating software solutions as well as the time it will take to implement the solutions.

Companies like Origami Risk provide the technology, but the challenge is how each carrier intends to use it. Some focus on achieving efficiencies. We are talking with carriers today who have legacy systems from the 60s and 70s. They need to cut costs so that’s essentially an efficiency play. They are the carriers who are trying to figure out how to make digital transformation work. Streamlining processes is the first step and that includes combining data from current legacy systems with modern new systems.

Question: Are insurers focusing on the customer experience or are they more concerned about streamlining core insurance processes?

Answer: They want both. But behind all the digital transformation is still the legacy systems. The back-end transformation – e.g., streamlined processes – is what occurs first and then the customer-facing experience happens. That’s what’s new. Streamlining core processes improves the customer experience but what insurers are learning is that the customer experience takes a more concerted effort to get right and that the customer experience will continue to evolve as the consumer evolves. Everyone is looking for the ‘Amazon experience’.

Joe ended our conversation with this thought: Origami Risk is doing insurance digital transformation in a different way.

This is the first in a series of blogs that will focus on Joe Cannon’s view from Seat 2A on the state of P&C insurance digital transformation.

To reach out to Joe and hear more about the advantages of Origami Risk, he will be at ITC in Vegas and would love to meet up with P&C insurance executives personally. Joe can be contacted at jcannon@origamirisk.com or 614-397-0716.