Brokers present ideas for innovative technologies at Aviva Canada’s BrokerTech Launchpad

Aviva Canada announced on Wednesday that it has received its first presentation of ideas from its BrokerTech LaunchPad pilot program, “a program that gives insurance brokers the opportunity to present their ideas for technologies to disrupt, transform and lead the insurance industry.”

Tom Reid, Aviva Canada‘s executive director, digital brokers, told Canadian Underwriter that “while specifics regarding the proposals are not ready for public release, the tremendous broker response and quality of submissions compels us to announce that another BrokerTech LaunchPad event will be held in the fall.”

Aviva Canada has reported that it is the first to offer such a program in Canada and has $15 million to invest, with each idea eligible for up to $2 million.

Three broker teams made presentations to a team of Aviva leaders in one of four categories: the Internet of Things (such as new technologies that connect to a home, a person’s health, a car or a smartphone); Data and Analytics (machine learning, artificial intelligence and new software technologies, for example), Distribution (new sharing economy platforms, for example) and Customer Propositions (such as smarter ways to reach and serve customers, like peer-to-peer platforms). Reid said the number of brokers on each team varied. “For the three that presented to us, it was typically two to three broker reps on each team, although this was not prescribed by us.”

“It was definitely interesting to see the breadth of submissions that came in,” Reid continued. He said that most of the ideas focused on one of three areas: connectivity – how to better connect insurers to brokers and brokers to customers; big data – properly utilizing the large amount of data that insurers and brokers have on their customers to improve the customer experience; and broker management systems – improving upon the historical systems (four to five vendors) that have been available to brokers for decades. “All of these have a common thread of improving the customer experience that brokers, with the support of insurers, can provide,” Reid noted.

The BrokerTech LaunchPad pilot was launched earlier this year, with Aviva Canada reaching out to brokers and launching the website for the program in early March of 2017. “The end goal is to assist in the digitization of the broker channel and improve the overall insurance experience for customers,” Reid said.