A new report from Accenture says Australian and global insurers should work towards building an “intelligent, data driven” operating model to elevate business performance.

The pandemic disruption and climate-linked natural catastrophes have upended historically reliable risk models, reinforcing the need for the industry to strengthen its operational resilience.

Increased use of technology to improve products, customer services, claims handling and other key functions can be a winning formula for insurers who take the right approach.

“Insurers don’t have the luxury of status-quo operations,” the report, Fast-track to Future-ready performance, says.

“So much is changing so fast for them, and falling behind competitors and not delivering on customer expectations is a real risk.

“To keep up with what’s happening on the outside – in markets, with technology and across all stakeholders – insurers need to evolve what’s happening on the inside. Fast.”

Accenture Insurance Lead Australia and New Zealand Marianne Hutchinson says local insurers are certainly making headway in combining data, technology, processes and human resources to build an intelligent and resilient operating model.

In short they are achieving “operational maturity”, which can translate into tech-savvy ways to acquire customers faster or discover new revenue growth.

But there is room still for improvement, Ms Hutchinson says.

“At present, there can be too much reliance on in-house technology teams to be able to manage operations and customer service when catastrophe hits,” she told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“Enabling cloud infrastructure across all operations can substantially alleviate this pressure.

“The key challenge for insurers is keeping intelligent operations high on the agenda, particularly while dealing with the immediate impacts of crises like COVID, fires and floods.”

The report says now is the time for insurers to focus on building an “intelligent” set-up. They can achieve this by focusing in a number of areas such as thinking big and going beyond incremental change, enhancing the value of data and building complementary third-party and ecosystem relationships.

Click here for the report.