e-Banking trends are on the rise worldwide

By: Omar Abdulhafiz

In the past few decades, our perception of the things that are most essential to our daily lives has been transformed more than ever before. With the gradual and accelerating evolution of telecommunications technology, these gadgets have slowly become elementary parts of our lives as utilities such as water and electricity. Not having a phone at home, for example, may cause us to feel as if we are completely isolated from the outside world. And it does not stop here.

Fast forward to the second decade of the 21st century, even the ordinary phones are slowly becoming more like pieces of antiques, as these little powerful devices known as smartphones replace them. It never escapes us to liken their fate to that of typewriters as they were replaced with personal computers toward the last quarter of the 20th century.

Why e-commerce is today’s go-to industry

By: Cesilia Faustina

From toilet paper to garden supplies, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new understanding to the term online shopping. With social distance and lockdowns all around, we have been forced to embrace the online sphere more than usual, especially when it comes to online shopping. As we speak, you’re probably online shopping while reading this, I know I’m online shopping while writing it. Being stuck inside definitely brings out the urge to shop online. Suddenly, your room seems emptier than usual and you have the craving to buy that vintage looking clock you have no use for.

The point is, since the start of COVID and with lockdown all around, it’s becoming more familiar to bulk buy or online shop. According to Paul Marsden, a consumer psychologist at the University of Arts London, as quoted in CNBC, he saw this trend as: “Panic buying can be understood as playing to our three fundamental psychology needs.” These needs include autonomy, relatedness, and competence. 

Insurtech: understanding the impacts of insurance automation

By: Lotfi AlSarori

Insurance companies, just like all businesses in the information age, rely heavily on information systems. Whether it is to automate underwriting and claim processing or keep track of their financial transactions, business software brings a lot of benefits to this important financial sector. Business systems are made to facilitate the work of organizations and make them more productive saving them time, cost, and effort. Insurance companies are no exception. 

While Fintech describes the use of technology in the financial services, Insurtech is the intersection of technology in a specific financial services sector, insurance. According to Investopedia: “Insurtech refers to the use of technology innovations designed to squeeze out savings and efficiency from the current insurance industry model.” 

How can insurance customer portals guarantee efficiency?

By: Lana Bawa'neh

According to Statista, 88 percent of people expect companies to have an online self-service system. This means that customer portals have become an essential tool to have rather than just a complementary one. 

A customer portal is an online system for customer self-management allowing authorized users to access their information and utilize the services they need. It is like a digital gateway to enable customers access and manage their accounts and the relevant services via a web browser.

How Content Management will change the IT landscape

By: Jamil Martin Salah

We love content. A challenge faced by more and more of us each day involves how to best sort through and consume the immense amount of digital content delivered to us everyday through our favourite content providers. There is a lot to sift through across a virtually unlimited range of topics. In fact, one could argue that content is limited in practice only by the imagination of content providers and the demand generated by content consumers.

The content management journey

Content in the IT world is tricky. Just defining what content is can be a tough philosophical exercise, and in the digital sphere is simply defined as any media that exists in the form of digital data. Digital Media has seen radical transformations through the years and continues to do so with the likes of YouTube, Facebook, and more recently Netflix revolutionizing how end-users get to access, consume, and enjoy their content while also creating demands for new content types. However, the methods of organizing, editing, and delivering content have not seen radical changes since the introduction of the Content Management System in its most basic form in 1995 by FileNet. 

Hot topics in the Insurance industry 2020 and what to expect for the near future

 By: Omar Abdulhafiz

The year 2020 was certainly full of challenges the magnitude of which is rarely witnessed in the business world as a whole, let alone the insurance sector. With the COVID-19 pandemic as the leading factor behind the worldwide pandemonium, insurers have found themselves in a race against time to adapt to a completely new reality before it is too late.

Amidst all these challenges and turbulence, market experts are working to map out the main critical trends that have grasped insurers’ attention. Most notably, statistics show that customer satisfaction was perhaps the most trending concern among insurance providers. This article touches upon this issue, among several others, in some detail.

What the COVID-19 challenge means for Customer Experience in the Insurance industry

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

In a previous article, we talked about how the ongoing pandemic has spurred investment in InsureTech. We touched upon the immense rise in investment in InsureTech through the first half of 2020, then discussed three main factors behind this upsurge in investment. Interestingly enough, however, this interest in investment in InsureTech was looming in the air even before the COVID-19 crisis had struck the world.

In their 23rd annual global CEO survey, PWC identified the top three opportunities that CEOs have prioritized investing in for 2020.

As shown in the diagram below, these three factors were Customer Experience, Core Technology Transformation, and Intelligent Automation. What is more intriguing is that Customer Experience was at the very top of the list. But, why?

Top trends to watch out for in the reinsurance brokerage industry

By: Cesilia Faustina

Many broker companies are looking for new solutions in trying to fulfil customer demands. Brokers are now looking for a more connected experience amongst brokers, customers and reinsurers. This need is leading to a digital ecosystem amongst the reinsurance brokerage industry where workflow operations can be conducted on a much more productive level.

The reinsurance market is valued at 254.9 billion USD in 2018 and is expected to reach 299.500 billion USD by the end of 2024, according to the Market Study Report. As we can see, the reinsurance industry is most likely not going to slow down and more brokers are looking to enhance their process.

Those that can adapt to the changing times of digitalization will surely come ahead compared to those unwilling to adapt. This is why it is important to talk about some of the digital trends popping up for reinsurance brokers.

How digital health is shaping the medical insurance scene

By: Cesilia Faustina

The health sector is of great importance. It continues to be a huge market with 1.4 billion dollars of gross-written-premium in 2017, according to McKinsey. With rising numbers of natural disasters and diseases, more and more people are looking for greater solutions to maintain good healthcare.

Technology is becoming a powerful trait in healthcare these days. The industry is now taking advantage of various different tech, from AI and blockchain to wearables. This ecosystem has created a world of digitalization that has seeped into the way healthcare is measured and analyzed. Examples of this may be seen through many companies now gathering health data through machines, even health insurance companies now are getting in on the action.

The COVID-19 impact sends InsurTech investments through the roof

 By: Omar Abdulhafiz

Make no mistake, the COVID-19 crisis of 2020 is one of the biggest shockwaves in the history of business as a whole. And if we were to pinpoint the single most remarkable impact it had on business, it is that COVID-19 has pushed virtually every last major sector forcefully toward investment in digital transformation. The insurance sector, naturally, is no exception.

One aspect of this impact can be seen in the big fluctuation in InsurTech investment during the first half of 2020. According to a Deloitte report published earlier this year, InsurTech investment plummeted between March and April, but it skyrocketed between May and June (see figure below).