Tokyo, 2 June 2022 – NTT DATA, a global digital business and IT services leader, has launched the first issue of a new insurance sector white paper series, "Roadmap to a Successful Digital Transformation in Life & Annuities Insurance," analyzing the specific challenges and themes of the insurance sector and presenting the company's recommendations based on their global approach. The following is an abstract of NTT DATA's research and findings.

Market momentum

The insurance industry has spent years discovering and adapting at the same time on the path of digitization. However, it was during the year 2020 that due to an unexpected event, the transformation process had to be accelerated to respond to this complex situation. The Life and Annuities industry (L&A) was no exception during the pandemic, as it is a complex industry where interactions with customers are overly sensitive, some companies proved to be closer to their customers by understanding and adapting to their needs.

NTT DATA has analyzed the main challenges that Life and Annuities Insurance companies are experiencing currently with regards to their transformation process and offers solutions on how to define the best transformation route for their company that allows them to navigate the obstacles that the future will hold and achieve their digital vision.

In this whitepaper, we have the collaboration of Celent, through an interview with its expert Juan Mazzini – Head of Insurance Practice EMEA, APAC & Latam. Shares what are the keys for L&A companies to transform successfully.

New Routes Towards the Evolution of the Industry

Considering the importance that digitalization has brought to the insurance industry for the way that now companies connect with their customers. It is important to mention that customers have a greater affinity for those companies that can communicate in an agile, transparent way and that can add value to the products and services that are offered. With this new customer panorama, the insurance industry cannot be left behind and must evolve towards hyper-personalization and rapid engagement with its customers.

For Life and Annuities insurers, in its mission to deliver better solutions and experiences to their policyholders, it is key to stay close to technology. The modernization of the IT landscape helps to overcome one industry's main challenges, the legacy of obsolete technology platforms, and high IT and operational costs.

Insurers are not alone in this path; it is increasingly common nowadays to see how strategic partnerships as a new way to accelerate and excel in their delivery. The importance of choosing the right strategic partner is critical for the insurer to be able to manage its operations efficiently and to have a partner that understands what kind of support is needed to move forward in its digital transformation process.

Currently, there are examples of insurers that are demanding collaboration with third parties to provide better service and experience to their policyholders. NTT DATA supported a project conducted for a client who specialized in Life Insurance and Annuities interested to maintain high-quality service for their clients. As NTT DATA, we have more than 20 years as a third-party administration (TPA) with this expertise the project implemented for the Life and Annuities insurer company received benefits such as A standardized operating model from due diligence to transition to delivery of services, Policy volume growth drives reduction in operating costs, among others.

The insurance industry is experimenting with a new moment, an era of connected companies, where the industry needs to have more connectable companies, able to collaborate with other industries, to modernize their IT landscape to deliver ever more engaging experiences.

NTT DATA's insight

In our interaction with our clients in the insurance industry, we have been able to see that there is a clear interest in increasing digitalization and getting closer to modern technologies. Insurers want to improve self-service and be able to develop a user kind of technology, but for this to happen insurers are forced to decide for themselves as to which technology is the best option. For this to happen, it is essential to know that the future is unknown on how many technologies have existed, even if the insurer has made the best selection on the available choices now, within five years the company is not confronted with something that has become legacy.

From this understanding of the real needs of the market where companies cannot excel at everything, therefore it is important to make available the best possible technology as affordable as possible and implemented as smoothly as possible. NTT DATA developed the Global Insurance Digital Platform (GIDP). GIDP is a modular and extensible API-driven platform with a set of domain functional modules built on modern architecture and a pre-integrated partner ecosystem. Our value proposition is to enable an accelerated creation and launch of new Digital businesses and Core Modernization facilitating the best-in-class customer experience.

NTT DATA'S GIDP can support insurers in the following use cases:

• Accelerating the time-to-market for a rapid introduction of new business/new products
• Providing an enhanced customer experience thanks to its approach to digitalization
• Allowing a quick integration with your systems that requires a limited up-front investment
• Shifting to an agile operating model
• Giving you access to an enhanced partner ecosystem
• Easily launching your greenfield approach
• Simplifying your legacy technology landscape

Conclusion

Life and Annuities insurers, on their road to digital transformation, can decide either to walk alone or with a partner. In the partnership scenario, it is of great importance to choose the right partner and ecosystem, as a strategic partner with whom they can reach a win-win scenario in the most appropriate ecosystem will help to generate added value in insurance products and services.

Download the full white paper here.

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA – a part of NTT Group – is a trusted global innovator of IT and business services headquartered in Tokyo. We help clients transform through consulting, industry solutions, business process services, IT modernization and managed services. NTT DATA enables clients, as well as society, to move confidently into the digital future. We are committed to our clients' long-term success and combine global reach with local client attention to serve them in over 50 countries. Visit us at nttdata.com.

Press contact:

NTT DATA Corporation
Public Relations Department
Email: pr-support@kits.nttdata.co.jp

Product and service inquiries

NTT DATA Corporation
Global Marketing Headquarters
Leonardo Uego

Masaki Maeda
Takumi Mitsuhashi
Email: global-marketing@kits.nttdata.co.jp

News Releases.

The services, prices of products and services, specifications, telephone numbers, etc. for inquiries and other information included in news releases are the data available on the day of the release. This information may be changed at any time without notice. In certain circumstances, due to various risks or unexpected occurrences, actual results may also be different from the plans or projections in news releases.