Most European insurers expect demand for digital products and services to increase significantly in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

A survey of 290 decision-makers at European insurance companies by Infosys for research and advisory firm Information Services Group (ISG), found that 86 per cent of insurance executives expect customer behaviour to change significantly due to the crisis - with more than 95 per cent agreeing that their customers want more digital products and services.

In addition, more than 90 per cent of those responding believed the Coronavirus would accelerate digital innovations in the insurance industry.

A further 64 per cent of the respondents assumed the effects of COVID on their businesses would last longer than a year, and another 21 per cent expected the effects to last between seven and 12 months.

As the virus takes its toll, more than 60 per cent of those surveyed expected some of their business partners to disappear from the market as a result, even as other companies take their place - with the new firms being a combination of vendors, InsurTechs and IT service providers.

The report noted that some 2,500 insurance startups have entered the EMEA market in the last two years, providing innovative solutions that mostly have supplemented the product portfolios and value chains of the established market leaders.

About 65 per cent of those surveyed saw the crisis opening the door to these new market entrants - InsurTechs and other online disruptors - to develop new, competing offerings.

More than three quarters of those responding rated improved customer experience as important, while more than 74 per cent also saw automation and digitisation as important. Meanwhile, more than 60 per cent wanted to invest in digital customer experience technologies, and more than half want to invest in cloud transformation technologies.

Nearly half of those surveyed said they wanted to invest in data analytics, machine learning, or artificial intelligence (AI).

Johanna von Geyr, partner and co-lead of the EMEA financial services and insurance practice at ISG, said: “No customer likes long waiting times, filling out numerous forms and long and confusing contract clauses.

“The recent digitisation of everyday life - be it working from home or shopping - is also changing the expectations of insurance customers in a significant and lasting way.”

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