As the world continues to evolve, new economies form that change consumer behavior. Just as the gig economy came about, the most recent has been the creator economy. In recent years, we have seen younger generations (gen z, gen x, and even millennials) blazing their own paths, choosing to work for themselves, and valuing independence and freedom more than anything else.

As a result of these economic trends, the insurance industry must adapt to survive. Embedded insurance is a $3 trillion market opportunity that is a win-win-win solution for insurers, third party organizations, and customers alike. Embedded insurance is a seamless way to distribute insurance services and products to where your customers are. Insurers who take advantage of this approach can quickly tap into new markets and new lines of business, while end customers benefit by getting access to relevant insurance at the right time and place. Lastly, third party organizations who embed insurance into their current product or service can help enhance their brand, differentiate their products, and drive their revenue.

Below is a list of reasons why embedded insurance is the future for insurance companies:

1. Lower distribution costs for Insurers and new revenue streams for third party organizations

By embedding insurance with a third party organization, insurers are able to take advantage of a company’s existing user base.   Since the relationship and trust has already been built between company and customer, insurers can simply focus on offering additional products or services that benefit that specific niche of consumers. This increases revenue streams for the third party organization, adds value for their end customers, and cuts distribution costs for insurers, who can eliminate the time and money spent on acquiring new customers. It’s truly a win for everyone involved.

2. More affordable, relevant and personalized insurance to end customers when and where they need it most

As an insurer, your customers include both individuals and businesses – which globally, are both underserved by the insurance industry. As global trends change due to to demographics, digitization, urbanization, and climate change, so does the disruption to traditional ways of living. In fact, research shows that human behavior is changing at rates never seen before in history. One can no longer ignore the rise of the omni-channel, social-media-driven, conscious consumer that is worlds away from where they were even just two years ago. And truth be told, customers have the closest relationships with organizations they interact with the most or who are involved in special moments of their lives. That rarely includes insurance companies. As a result, insurance companies are better off embedding insurance products b2b with companies that already have a strong relationship with their customers. By embedding relevant insurance at the point of sale – i.e. when consumers are actually thinking about the associated risk(s) with that product or service –  insurers can reach customers at the right time, in the right state of mind. Insurance is simply embedded into the customer journey, offering a much more seamless and personalized experience.

3. Insurers get a better reach to their customers

Embedded insurance allows insurers to be at the right place, at the right time. For instance, when buying an expensive smart device, the insurer can recommend the relevant insurance product for the buyer during check-out or any other time in the customer buying cycle. More often than not, customers will take the opportunity to secure their purchase in the most hassle-free and affordable way. To this same point, no traditional insurer can anticipate the specific needs of a myriad of niche requirements, nor would it be cost effective for them to try. That’s why it makes sense to embed insurance through third party organizations that already understand their customers’ needs and wants. These companies have likely been collecting data about their specific customer since their inception, meaning they already have identified information that would take an insurer way too much time and money to try and understand on their own.

4. It’s quick, easy, and hassle-free

Without a doubt, buying insurance is a complicated and tedious process. A buyer thinks a hundred times before investing in any traditional insurance policy. However, embedded insurance makes the process quick, easy, and uncomplicated. It takes out the endless paperwork and fine terms that send customers running in the other direction. We have seen from countless psychology studies, that people are paralyzed by choice. The beauty of embedded insurance is that, most of the time, it’s one product or service that is being offered to consumers that is relevant to the very thing they are looking to protect risk with. Embedded insurance helps remove the paralysis that comes with the decision making process when people have too many options to chose form. It’s either do you want to add on insurance to protect this product or service, or not?

5. Building a global safety net

The bottom line is that the more insurers, third party organizations, and customers that get on board with embedded insurance, the wider we can cast a global safety net. Embedded insurance is crucial to providing relevant insurance to the millions of businesses and individuals who are unserved by current methods. This will help close the protection gap, and build a world where more people feel safe and protected from risks.

At MIC Global, we believe in a workplace where people don’t have to water down who they are. The diversity of our team is what gives us the capacity to challenge the norm and push past the boundaries of groupthink. Diversity to us is the differences of individuals – different races, genders, ages, backgrounds, cultures, and ethnicities.

We provide a space where the women and men who work at MIC are encouraged to share both their masculine and feminine sides. We believe both vulnerability and assertiveness are important qualities in the workplace. We dispel the stereotypes that women being aggressive are bossy or that men showing emotion are weak. It takes strength and courage for a person of any gender to speak up and show emotion.

We know that success requires the Yin and Yang – a combination of both the right and left-brained… the creatives and the number crunchers… the introverts and the extroverts. It’s a delicate balance – but always tilted towards resolution and moving forward.

The reason we’re able to create great insurance products for people living in Accra, Ghana is the same reason we’re able to create effective insurance products for gig workers living in New York City – because we have members of our team who live in both places. We have people from MIC who are physically on the ground in 5 continents, immersed in the everyday life of the regions. They understand people’s needs and the risks they face.

We share our values with you in hopes that you can understand a little bit more about who we are and what we stand for. We are working hard to build a global safety net so that we can expand our whole-hearted belief in inclusion for everyone. Diversity is magic.

Triple threat: A person, especially a performer or athlete, who is proficient in three important skills within their particular field. This generally makes them highly successful.

Within cricket for example, there are 14 batsmen with international hundreds in all three formats from Ireland, West Indian, two New Zealanders, three Indians, a couple of Sri Lankans, a pair of Aussies, a Bangladeshi, a South African, a Pakistani… and no Englishmen. Kevin O’Brien (Ireland); Chris Gayle (West Indies) ; Martin Guptill and Brendon McCullum (New Zealand) ; KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, and Rohit Sharma (India) ; Mahela Jayawardene and Tillakaratne Dilshan (Sri Lanka) ; Shane Watson and Glenn Maxwell (Australia) ; Tamim Iqbal (Bangladesh) ; Faf du Plessis (South Africa) ; Ahmed Shehzad (Pakistan) .

Triple threat for movie field would be a person who is a writer, producer and director. For example you can look to James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Peter Jackson and George Lucas and they have all delivered movies on a global scale with huge box office results.

How can this be considered in business too. What is a triple threat insurance company? What are the three factors you need to make a highly successful insurance company? Technology – Capacity – Distribution

When you look at the new insurtech players like Lemonade or BIMA or ByMiles or Bought by Many we see one or two of the three elements in their armoury but not 3.

Lemonade and ByMiles have the tech and but rely on their partners for Capacity plus they are fighting in the distribution arena ny going direct. BIMA may have distribution, but again capacity is via a partner. All these are weak in 1 or 2 areas. They are relying on partners for capacity and what if this changes? They need money for marketing and what if this starts to become harder to get? They have tech but can they sustain its growth as they scale?

I am not saying we have all the answers however we believe we are a triple threat in insurance to our competition and this gives us the edge.

Technology – we have our own tech team. This is being built in the markets where we develop and sell our products. This means the tech is both for our customers and managed with them in mind. We have a depth of talents, traditional insurtech together with AI and Machine Learning capabilities.

Capacity – we are a licenses P&C and Life carrier. This means we can write a wide range of products from property through to life covers. This means we can put a customer at the centre and support their needs. Life. Property. Work. What ever they want we can support them. We don’t have to rely on other companies to moderate our ambition.

Distribution – this is where the insurance industry normally hands over to aggregators or brokers. We don’t. We have built up partners that allow us to embed our products in to systems that are direct to customers. The sales friction is reduced and the customer journey is greatly improved.

We match our key capabilities with our people. Our people are experts in insurance and sales. Our triple threat capabilities empower our people to deliver the best products and service that we can. Our people have these three core capabilities at their fingertips and this powers our company forward.

What is the saying? “To have a finger in every pie”. Someone who has a finger in every pie is involved in a lot of different activities or knows about a lot of different things. This idiom can be used positively, to show that someone is energetic and has varied skills and interests. However, in a different context, it can be used in a more critical way, to say that someone is too involved in activities that should not concern them.

As a start-up – well we are a mature start up in that we have recently merged several companies with pedigree going back over 16 years – we are always being pushed to focus by industry specialists and gurus and we do indeed focus. However, when I look around successful insurance companies and insurance agencies always see diversity in their business, indeed spreading risk across a multitude of areas is all part of insurance success. I see companies with fingers in many pies.

Having a diverse and spread book of business is an essential part of our success and strength.

I have been accused of having fingers in many pies and when I have presented alongside other start-ups we are the only company that has a diverse book of business. Lemonade has only just added a second line of business in pets, by miles is only about cars, and we see this single focus all the time. And yet the successful insurance companies – many that back these insurtechs – have a very wide cross section of business and so they should – it spreads the risk. Successful insurance players know that you need a wide portfolio to have long term success.

We are a digital insurance company. Our goal is to server the unserved globally, these are individuals and businesses, all people who cannot readily find a relevant insurance product to serve their needs. By definition, this is a diverse and large cross section of risks. We are committed to serving our community and building services and products to reduce the risks for them and be the safety net when things happen.

When people look at our company we will not fit in the normal insurtech box and we more accurately fit into the digital insurance company box. This is a box with very few companies in it.

Incumbents are on the edge of this box in that they have digital initiatives and goals and we see them moving slowly into the circle.

Insurtechs are also on the periphery and many are digital but again few are taking the risk, they are effectively part of the MunichRe train or other insurance investors in this space.

So the upshot of the accusation of fingers in pies is that we will continue to grow our business and focus on building a diverse book of business to protect our community. Without a strong company, you cannot do all the things that you want to do. If you want to help the unserved, as we do, then you need a strong and wide platform to leap from.

Social Impact, what is it and can we do it?

What is it? A significant, positive change that addresses a pressing social challenge.

Can we do it? Creating social impact is the result of a deliberate set of activities with a goal matching definition above.

The point about the social part of the phrase is that the impact has to be focused on creating change and supporting what we can all agree on to benefit human on the planet. By definition it’s an impact on something we care about.

Today many people want to work for companies create social impact. I get that. On our web site we have (had) a page on social impact and when I put this page up I believed that part of what we did was good things and I wanted to shout about them. Show we had a heart and wasn’t like other insurance companies.

However over the last few months I have been reviewing our efforts about social impact and I got to thinking….

We are an insurance company. Surely everything we do as an industry has a social impact? A conscious insurance company fully focus on its social impact and responsibility, is this the definition of social impact? Isn’t insurance the ultimate social impact service?

Is this true today? Much of the ‘western’ focused insurance effort is fully focused on addressing companies and people that MUST buy insurance to fulfil a contract obligation or to spread risk from their balance sheet or to mitigate risk in buying something. Their audience focus is top earning people or companies. Globally this represents the top 3%, companies in the top 30,000 out of the 100 million or so companies and top 200,000,000 people out of the general population of over 7 billion. This audience represents where a majority of insurance is sold globally by value. If there is social impact it is totally focused on the few not the masses. It’s where the top brokers and insurers are focused. Therefore, they is very little social impact generated by the general insurance industry.

What about the rest of the planet’s people and businesses? They are looking for social impact but they buy very little insurance, this I believe is the opportunity. The opportunity to discover why they don’t buy and then to deliver service and products to them to make insurance relevant and easy for them to participate in and to release the benefits of insurance to them and their community.

This is why I have taken our ‘social impact’ page down. We are social impact. Our message is that our services and products help you and your community in your time of need. We help the community recover quickly when things happen. This is our social impact. Providing a safety net to allow people to recover quickly is our way of providing social impact. Delivering social impact is through the core of our business and buried in our DNA.

MIC Global provides its social impact most visibly through the payment of claims; however, the purchase of the policy is equally important as this is where the community is built. When people take out a policy, they are supporting themselves and the community in equal measure. The act of buying a policy enables the customer to do things with the risk covered for themselves, their business and their family. This could be going on a long trip or taking a loan out to grow or protecting their property. The policy covers the risk and allows progress of the person, business, family and their community. The act of buying the policy builds up a premium pot in MIC, this allows us to pay claims when unfortunate things happen to our customers.

The payment of claims is especially important to us and we try to pay claims very quickly. The way we do this is to make it clear what is needed when the policy is taken out and then we track claims activity every day. On some our programs we even contact customers to make sure they are making claims if we think they should be. Creating social impact is what drives our company – the bigger the impact we make the more successful our products are. The result is positive economic activity and protection of that activity when things happen. The result is that a community grows in wealth and security over time.