Article by Nipaphan Poonsatiensap CFP®: Independent financial planner, writer and lecturer

Wherever we go, more or less, the word “FinTech” is to be heard around and about. FinTech, a financial innovation, has been developed with technology is now playing major roles in dominating our daily life, for instance smart phones, Internet and online systems that have been developed extensively by the financial and investment business sectors. The apparent examples of FinTech are online financial transactions through Internet Banking or Mobile Banking including buying of selling of securities and mutual funds, etc. The rising of technology trends is in response to the changing of consumers’ behaviours since the Internet accessibility has become more extensive and convenient.

For insurance business sector, these changes are as well inevitable. We then starting to hear more of the word “InsurTech” which is a combination of words “Insurance” an “Technology”, meaning technology utilization for developement of the insurance business sector. Thus, the InsurTech has been considered as part of FinTech and this new InsurTech insurance format has been practiced abroad for many years already. In Thailand, the implementation has still been in developing stage and some insurance companies started to use technology with insurance selling and after sales service for their clients who held the bindings already.

InsurTech is capable for insurance problems solving and protential developments as following;
 

• Currently we must admit that there are many constraints for insurance buyers such as the coverages offering are not multitude enough and has not in deed met customer requirements yet. The un-impeccable coverages, the unaffordable premiums for low income clients, all of these problems caused by the inflexible pre-conditions which InsurTech is capable to analyze and integrate all existing data to serve our requirements. From our given personal data; questions such as do we have any other way of risks, what kind of an insurance we should buy and for how much to reach the limit? The InsurTech will select or suggest an adequate and most satisfied insurance from data base for us immediately.
  
  

• Reduce the restrictions for clients to access through insurance business which sell through insurance agents as is nowadays, insurance buying then bases on relationship between insurance agents and clients not on genuine needs of the clients. It’s not unusual that most of the clients have bought the not enough coverage insurance as per their needs. InsurTech will simply enable consumers to access into the insurance’s product and service through their inhand online which resulting in benefits to the business in a longrun.
  
  
• Systematize insurance clients’ data and capable to analyse the data of individual risk acceptance in order to reflect on the right premium which is fair and suitable for clients.
  
  
• For insurance against casualty such as automobile insurance, InsureTech is capable to assist in calculating the insurance premium according to distance or actual time of car usage resulting in lower cost of insurance premium in case of very few car usage.
  
  
• Claim coverage benifit. In normal practice, it takes forever in each claim coverage for an event of cars accident. Apart from piling of evidences, there will be waiting for the insurance company or examiner to check on the damage or proof of mistakes, all of which accumulating to time loss. InsureTech is capable to develope an online claim coverage system. The integration of all data effortlessly expedites the followups and investigation details together with a faster approval of the indemnity.
   

All of these are just samples of InsurTech which exhibit important role for Thailand’s insurance development in the future and how it would benefit the insurance companies and clients. No matter what capacity we are on, we ought to pay attention to the information and be ready for change because change has always both sides of positive and negative impact. We would then understand and be able to optimize the using of technology efficiently.