It’s not news that insurance solution providers have been expanding the notion of what makes up part of the core suite. For over a decade now, vendors have been growing the policy administration suite to include—among other components—billing, claims, workflow, document management, portals, and business intelligence. Insurity’s acquisition of SpatialKey, however, is about moving beyond components and rethinking the value of data itself. It’s likely this will be a recurring theme in the new decade.
Third-party data in the insurance industry is nothing new; in fact, some of the data providers in Novarica’s report about this space have been around for over a hundred years! There is also an emerging crop of vendors who aggregate public and semi-public data sources like social media, newspaper archives, and government records to provide alternate, modern sources of data for insurers.
To insurers, the idea of using data to make better pricing and risk decisions is built into the core of the industry. But, until now, it wasn’t built into the core systems themselves.
It’s likely that the SpatialKey acquisition won’t be the last of its kind. Both incumbent data providers and core system suite providers will be looking closely at this space. Traditional data providers see these modern data aggregators as a natural complement to their existing business model. Core system suite providers, on the other hand, are once again looking to expand what it means to provide a core suite of tools to an insurer. To those vendors, it’s not the data that matters, but the value of that data, meaning a core suite can provide pre-fill, risk analysis, and automation as part of the overall business value.
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