ACORD's 2022 Insurance Digital Maturity Study of Top Global Insurance Carriers Finds That Fewer Than 25% Have Truly Digitized the Value Chain

Study Highlights Key Factors for Insurers to Successfully Navigate the Digital Journey 

PEARL RIVER, N.Y., June 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ACORD, the standards-setting body for the global insurance industry, today released its 2022 Insurance Digital Maturity Study of the world's 200 largest insurance carriers. Key findings of the study will also be presented as part of the ACORD Industry First virtual event series, co-hosted with Microsoft, on June 23^rd.

A rapidly evolving insurance ecosystem, paired with the disruption of a global pandemic, have led to a more urgent need than ever for insurers to modernize. Yet, the ACORD study indicates that much work remains to be done. Among the 200 largest worldwide insurers, fewer than 25% have truly digitized the value chain, while more than 10% are not appreciably leveraging digital technologies within their current business processes. Further, more than half of the insurers in the study are still exploring how digitization can be applied against their business model.

This edition of the annual ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study includes data and insights current as of June 2022. The study assessed each company's digital maturity relative to its peers; compared the extent of digital capabilities with the level of value creation; and identified the issues, implications, and most importantly, execution imperatives around successful digitization. The findings provide a clear framework for identifying deficiencies and targeting key improvements.

Since its inception, the study has doubled to cover the 200 largest insurers. This year the scope has expanded to include not only publicly traded insurers, but also mutuals — an important component in the insurance industry. In addition, a new proprietary metric, Indexed Relative Profit, was created to measure value creation across multiple business lines and ownership structures. 

"The global pandemic amplified existing market forces, accelerating transformation that was already underway at forward-thinking organizations," said Bill Pieroni, President & CEO of ACORD. "The industry saw changes in ten months that may have otherwise taken ten years. The gap between those who have been prioritizing digitization, and those who have systematically underinvested, is now impossible to ignore."

The ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study found that companies that embrace digitization to create new, technology-enabled operating models throughout the organization significantly outperformed others in the industry, driving improved value creation. The findings include an unambiguous correlation between digital maturity and increased financial performance, as measured by both Total Shareholder Return and Indexed Relative Profit. The study also found that the performance gap between highly digitized insurers and laggards has continued to grow year-over-year, accelerated by the global pandemic.

"Having seen the pandemic accelerate our customers' digital journeys, we believe the industry is in the midst of a profound change," said Microsoft Insurance Industry Executive Jonathan Silverman. "Given today's challenges, the need to improve industry processes, and the desire to provide more valuable experiences for both employees and customers, we find this study to be very timely. We are excited to help make its insights available to our customers and the broader industry."

The study highlights that a well-managed business model, supported by robust digital capabilities, afforded top-tier digitized competitors with the ability to outperform the industry. 

"Strategic intent is meaningless without accompanying resource allocation," Pieroni added. "Insurers must not only embrace the digitization imperative – they must devote the critical mass of time, talent, and budget to digital investment. Aligning technology, process, organization, and strategy is a prerequisite for high performance in the industry moving forward."

The full 2022 ACORD Insurance Digital Maturity Study white paper, which includes strategic and execution imperatives for successfully developing digital capabilities, is free to download for ACORD members. For more information or to download the white paper, please visit www.acord.org/research.

Registration for the webinar presentation of the study, co-hosted with Microsoft, is currently open at www.acord.org/events.

ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) is the global standards-setting body for the insurance and related financial services industries. ACORD facilitates fast, accurate data exchange and efficient workflows through the development of electronic standards, standardized forms, and tools to support their use. ACORD engages thousands of insurance and reinsurance companies, agents and brokers, software providers, financial services organizations and industry associations in more than 100 countries. ACORD maintains offices in New York and London. Learn more at www.acord.org.

Leading with trust and innovation in everything we do, Microsoft enables insurers to reduce cost of operations, support new business models, and enhance integration with partners to accelerate services to meet customer expectations. Insurers can leverage a flexible, and trustworthy approach that offers a choice of public, private and hybrid cloud services with the highest commitment to security and regulatory compliance that is that is embedded with pervasive intelligence and supported by the largest ecosystem of technology partners.

More information is at Microsoft.com.

CONTACT: Beth Jarecki
[email protected]

SOURCE ACORD