EY Nexus for Insurance: The right platform at the right time

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the social purpose of insurance has taken on high-profile importance. Individuals, families, businesses and communities around the world have looked to the industry for support during the crisis, even as insurers have had to work hard to maintain operational resilience and financial solvency.

Many firms have risen to the challenge, offering premium holidays, accelerating commission payments to agents, and contributing to local support efforts. To continue meeting the needs of customers and distribution partners and to contribute to economic recovery, insurers must be able to move quickly in launching new products and services for the “new normal.” Traditional 18-24 month product development timelines won’t be fast enough. 

COVID-19 has also confirmed that insurers must become more digital, agile and automated if they are to meet all of these goals. Indeed, the ability to change – to develop new products, automate processes and offer rich personalized experiences – is essential for insurers if they are to live their purpose both in the near term and into the future. Functions across the business (including underwriting, claims, customer service, finance and accounting) must use technology to be nimbler and more responsive, too. That’s why some insurers are expanding and accelerating their transformation programs. 

More senior executives recognize the opportunity and need to transform because of – rather than despite – the challenging economic times. This is a positive development for an industry that historically has been slow to change. The barriers to successful transformation include both slow-moving cultures and outdated technology, which makes it difficult to enable new product development at speed and rich digital experiences.

EY Nexus for Insurance is a cloud-native platform designed to enable transformation and innovation at speed and at scale. As such, the platform can greatly benefit insurers as the industry emerges from the COVID-19 crisis. How specifically does EY Nexus streamline the innovation process? By providing the infrastructure insurers need to deploy and integrate the latest technologies in pursuit of their biggest business objectives. 

With EY Nexus, insurers can launch new products faster than ever before, engage customers and agents more effectively, modernize their systems without the risk of obsolescence, and even create entirely new brands or companies. Nationwide used EY Nexus for Insurance as the foundation to launch Spire, an innovative brand that offers automobile coverage targeted to the needs of millennial customers. Nationwide engaged EY after confronting internal IT constraints that would have delayed the project by years. Using EY Nexus, we helped Nationwide deliver Spire to market in just seven months – a pace previously unheard of in the insurance industry. 

The platform even helped contribute to the cultural and organizational change necessary for Nationwide to “self-disrupt” in launching the customer-centric product. Spire was developed with a start-up mentality and within an incubator-like working environment. The multi-disciplinary team included experts in user experience (UX), digital marketing and software development, as well as testing and production support professionals and specialists in traditional insurance functions. It embraced agile working strategies to streamline the development process and keep it laser-focused on customer needs. With Spire, customers are able to get a quote within 60 seconds, after answering only four questions. 

A curated ecosystem of innovative technology and software providers is what makes EY Nexus unique and powerful. EY technologists and insurance professionals have evaluated, engaged and actively monitored more than 650 InsurTech players and selected the strongest to be part of EY Nexus. There are technologies to automate and enhance processes across the entire insurance value chain – from underwriting and product design, to marketing and distribution, to policy administration and billing, to claims and customer service. And we continuously update and modify the available toolsets as new options come into the market. In that way, we designed EY Nexus to guard against tech obsolescence, which has long been a challenge for insurers.

Leveraging EY Nexus to enable innovation at speed

We believe EY Nexus is the right platform to reshape the insurance industry for the better because it supports change across the business. Dealing with the impacts of the crisis, individuals, families and businesses face new risks and will be looking for new protections. Insurers will need to be more responsive to customer and agent needs and offer more options for engagement. Smart digital self-service channels will be key. So will automated processes for sales and service, as well as throughout the back office. EY Nexus enables innovation in all of these areas.

Insurers need to be seen as part of the solution to the new challenges we all face if they are to remain relevant and live their social purpose. All of these imperatives equate to the need for insurers to become much more agile, nimble and digital in everything they do. EY Nexus can help them navigate the traditional barriers to change and meet the moment by fulfilling their purpose. The world needs a robust and high functioning insurance industry now more than ever – which means insurers need to change and innovate more effectively than ever before. We believe EY Nexus can help them do just that.