EY’s Nexus for Insurance leads digital transformation
Earlier this year, GroupAssur – one of Canada’s fastest growing non-life insurance providers – announced that it had partnered with Guidewire, launching its new digital transformation phase through Guidewire’s cloud-based platform.
But the transition has also included the use of a new insurance solution developed by EY, called Nexus – an integration layer for middleware micro-services with comprehensive service catalogs, API inventories, adapters and domain-specific data models.
Neil Pengelly, EY’s Canadian Insurance Consultant Manager based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, serves all the needs of EY’s insurance clients across the non-life and life insurance sectors. He describes Nexus as an activation platform that brings the best capabilities across a wide range of software and business technologies to enable customers.
“The Nexus for Insurance platform provides a core system powered by Guidewire, with EY’s Nexus resources. This allows for the rapid deployment – over months versus years – of full-stack features that give them the price and warranty features they need to deliver on their business, as well as a full-scale set of integrations. he says, pointing out that the integration potential includes Lloyd’s of London, along with many other options that allow GroupAssur to meet the needs of its customers and insurance companies.
Nexus addresses rapidly changing technologies
David Connolly is EY’s global insurance technology leader. Based in the world-renowned Silicon Valley technology area of California, he operates EY’s worldwide insurance technology and insurance innovation business, which includes Nexus.
According to Connolly, the reason Nexus is under the umbrella is that technology is changing so fast that insurers in many cases are struggling to keep up with the estimated 2,000 or so insurers that have emerged in existing companies, such as Guidewire, Duck Creek, EIS and others.
“Our dedicated job is to keep up with all of this and make it very easy for our customers to understand what technology can do for their business, as well as how they can enable rapid change without bearing the burden of all the research required to find out who to work with, says Connolly.
Fast distribution and the digital ecosystem
As technologies change rapidly, companies must constantly be at the forefront of new innovations, which is why Nexus adds so much value. “In many cases, insurance companies are struggling to keep up with the approximately 2,000 insured technologies that have emerged, let alone all the changes in existing companies, such as Guidewire and Duck Creek and EIS and others,” says Connolly. “Our dedicated job is to keep up with all of this and make it very easy for our customers to understand what technology can do for their business, as well as how they can enable rapid change without bearing the burden of all the research required to find figure out who to work with. “
Furthermore, insurance companies and their customers cannot be served by one company alone, and therefore the partner ecosystem is becoming more and more important. “We now see insurance companies cooperating outside of property, damage and life, if that’s all they provide, with health care or with benefits. And why stop there?” says Pengelly, “Nexus is designed to integrate, not just different technologies, but different companies on the go. And if the healthcare professionals you connect to initially do not work properly a few years later, you can fix them and insert some others seamlessly without disrupting the customer experience. Nexus is designed to support that. “
Nexus innovation appeals to the entire industry
While the target market for Nexus has been the insurance area, the amount of change that is happening in technology and new business means that the solution has much wider use cases.
“It doesn’t stop with insurance,” Connolly says. – The banks have a need to replace the core and get new products out quickly. Wealth management companies have the same need. Healthcare, the automotive industry, health sciences, government and others are now looking at the need for speed, if you will, and the Nexus platform is designed to be flexible, while its core will apply to any industry from a micro-service perspective, as well as provide obsolescence protection. “
But for now, the technology is rooted in the insurance industry, as it handles the demands for greater flexibility. “The need for insurance companies to bring more flexibility into the market and bring out more products based on customer preferences has never been stronger,” he concludes. “Nexus is positioned to support it.”
READ THE ENTIRE GROUP ASSUR REPORTS HERE