On 16–20 January 2023, the most important leaders from governments, businesses, and civil society gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting – one of the most important appointments for the socio-economic sector. This year, the meeting was titled “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” and it was focused on addressing the state of the world in terms of challenges and opportunities for the year ahead, as well as discussing priorities for all sectors and industries’ agendas.
Just before the Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum also published the 2023 edition of its Global Risks Report, which describes the main concerns in the current worldwide scenario and analyses the main problems to face this year and ahead. The report is the result of the interviews and surveys conducted by WEF by engaging over 1,200 experts, and it is aimed at collecting insights and defining trends related to the ever-evolving global risks landscape.
According to the report, we are experiencing the return of some so-called “older risks”, such as inflation, cost-of-living crisis, wars, geopolitical confrontation, and social conflicts. At the same time, these issues are intensified by the combined emergence of new risks, which include unsustainable levels of debt, low growth, de-globalisation, and of course the increasing pressure of climate change. At a technological level, the swift and unrestricted advancement of dual-use technologies also poses a new risk, while widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity represent long-term concerns for the next decade.
These insights show how the world is currently “at a critical inflection point” – urging leaders to act quickly and collaborate in order to tackle the risks and challenges ahead. In this context of growing risk and increasing uncertainty, the insurance industry plays a critical role – and the tech industry that supports it, too.
Insurance represents a form of risk management by definition: this means that any new or re-emerging risk expands business opportunities for insurers, who in turn can offer protection from risks and their consequences to their own customers by providing them with new, relevant insurance solutions and services. To do so, insurance companies need to be flexible and fast in their operations and offering development and to conduct risk analysis through data and analytics. New technologies and tech companies such as RGI are therefore key for insurers, enabling them to evolve their portfolio of products by quickly adapting to risks and meeting their customers’ demand for protection thanks to systems and tools able to support new needs and shifting business models.
As we look carefully at the evolution of the geopolitical and economic situation, at RGI we continue to work to keep up with global developments and thrive in our fast-paced and ever-changing industry. In order to support the insurance industry effectively, we conduct powerful data analysis and rely on our business intelligence to inform our data and insights-driven approach. This approach is fuelled not only by our privileged perspective as market observers, but also by the strategic collaboration of our departments and our leading position. While our R&D, Product and Strategic Marketing Teams work together to identify market trends and emerging technologies, our presence in local and international markets with more than 150 clients allows us to pool our expertise and resources to develop innovative solutions and anticipate customer expectations.
We are focused on designing modern core systems that include business processes tailored to our clients’ needs and requests, as well as to an ever-changing environment. Through the development of highly flexible product configurators, we offer insurers the perfect digital environment to design new products and launch them quickly onto the market with a very tight time-to-market, so that they can respond swiftly to the needs of their own customers. With our modular products, we make it possible for our clients to incorporate tailored options and services into their insurance offering. Insurance companies can therefore become more agile, flexible, and quick to react to any opportunity offered by old and new risks.
At the same time, through our technological products our clients’ policyholders are offered the ability to modify their policies on their own, whenever they need and whatever coverage they wish to add or remove. This means not only that different products can be managed in an easy and intuitive way all on the same platform, but also that policies can be personalised and modified constantly according to changing demands. Policyholders become empowered and are able to customise their insurance easily and independently at all times. If new needs arise or different risks come into the picture, customers can therefore quickly adjust their insurance policies accordingly.
As customer needs and concerns evolve over time, with the support of our solutions insurers can now offer evolving contracts where “modules” are simply added to or removed from policies, without having to replace the entire product. Moreover, they can also provide their customers with further personalised policies that include investments into sustainability-oriented funds and respond to wider concerns related to the growing pressure posed by climate change. At the same time, insurance companies can also address other current risks such as cybercrime and cyber insecurity by offering innovative coverage that can be added onto existing contracts.
Through this approach based on modular solutions, we support our clients so that they can offer their policyholders increasingly complex yet quickly adaptable policies and meet any necessity or requirement in a responsive way.