In conversation with: Duck Creek
Can you provide an overview of Duck Creek?
Duck Creek Technologies is a provider of insurance software solutions Its software is designed to help insurers improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer experience.
Duck Creek serves the entire insurance value chain. We offer a suite of applications, including core systems for policy, rating, billing, and claims as well as additional modules for distribution, producer*, insights, reinsurance management and digital customer service powered by Glia and Imburse payments. All of Duck Creek’s applications are delivered via a cloud-based platform, Duck Creek OnDemand, which provides offerings that are continuously updated and customisable to suit the changing needs of insurers, MGAs and brokers. Last year the company acquired Prima XL allowing Duck Creek to incorporate a reinsurance management tool, in addition to the recent acquisition of Imburse Payments.
What is your role at Duck Creek?
I am the Senior Sales Director covering the UK, Ireland and South Africa. I manage the full sales process for new and existing customers, typically including insurers, brokers and MGAs.
Why has embedded insurance become more relevant?
Embedded insurance has become more relevant due to several factors, including changing consumer behaviour, advancements in technology, and increasing competition in the insurance industry.
Changing consumer behaviour has led to a greater demand for convenience and simplicity. Consumers are increasingly looking for seamless, integrated experiences that meet all their needs in one place. Embedded insurance allows for the integration of insurance products and services into other purchasing journeys for cars, home appliances, and travel booking websites, providing a more convenient and streamlined experience for customers. Advancements in technology have made it easier to integrate insurance products into other products and services. The Internet of Things (IoT) has made it possible for devices to collect and share data, allowing insurers to create personalised and usage-based insurance products that are tailored to the needs of individual customers. For example, connected cars can provide data on driving behaviour, such as Tesla, which can be used to adjust insurance premiums in real time based on the actual risk posed by the driver. There is increasing competition in the insurance industry that has led to a focus on innovation and differentiation. Insurers are looking for new ways to stand out from their competitors and offer unique value propositions to customers. Embedded insurance allows insurers to differentiate themselves by offering innovative and convenient insurance products and services whilst also addressing some of the ever-widening insurance gaps.
How do insurers benefit from embedded distribution methods?
Insurers can increase their reach and customer acquisition, improving customer experience, retention and risk management whilst reducing costs. By integrating insurance products into other customer journeys, insurers can differentiate themselves and stay competitive in an increasingly crowded market.
What solutions does Duck Creek offer to support embedded product building and maintenance?
Duck Creek’s policy administration system (PAS) supports embedded product building and maintenance, allowing insurers to quickly create, release and modify products. Duck Creek’s low-code platform enables anyone at an insurance company to make changes rapidly. Our ‘product inheritance’ methodology also allows insurers to easily define and re-use product definitions across various geographies and line of business. With this insurers can change specific parts of an offering or create a new offering with a fast product development and distribution turnaround. Insurers can provide embedded insurance at the right time and stage in the customer journey. For example, our PAS accommodates multi-country and multi-currency products as well as real-time portfolio segmentation. This helps insurers tweak products to support regulatory requirements, which is particularly valuable when working across multiple territories where insurance regulations and commissions can vary.
Duck Creek also offers a variety of connection points for different distribution methods, through its catalogue of APIs. These APIs support embedded distribution through point-of-sale applications, company web portals, mobile applications and aggregator websites. To further simplify access to the global payments ecosystem, Duck Creek acquired Imburse in 2023. Insurers’ technology teams no longer need to build or remove payment gateways as Imburse allows insurers to connect to multiple payment streams. This streamlines the multi-channel distribution and payment process.
How do customers access Duck Creek’s ecosystem of partners to support embedded product building?
Our partners can be found on the Duck Creek Content Exchange. Duck Creek has over 80 Solution Partners, working in areas such as data enrichment, fraud detection and data modelling, amongst others. API content is available through an open architecture. Customers leverage the content they require and configure the solution to their specific needs. Partners are continuously polishing their pre-built content on the exchange, which allows insurers to increase their speed to market and build innovative new offerings.
The Content Exchange allows insurers to enhance products and customer experiences tailored to specific lines of business, geography and sales strategies.
What lines of business does Duck Creek support for embedded product distribution?
There are no restrictions on the line of business and customers can build complex or simple products. Duck Creek also works with personal, commercial and specialty insurance organisations.
What new developments will be most relevant for the future of embedded distribution?
Embedded products must be personalised to suit different policyholders, shortening the normal insurance product development and release timeline. This means developing product pricing and underwriting methods to support dynamic risk selection criteria that can feed into whatever end application is required at the time.
Compliance technology will also play an important role. As products are modified to support regulatory requirements, a clear catalogue and versioning of all the changes made to a product and rating must be created for auditing purposes.
Which lines of business will drive embedded insurance?
Personal lines are likely to continue to be the largest driver of growth, but we have also seen an increase in the commercial microinsurance and SME marketplace. One of the primary drivers of growth in this space is the increasing digitisation of business operations. As more businesses rely on digital platforms and tools to manage their operations, the opportunity for embedding insurance into these platforms and tools increases. Travel, warranty, cyber, health and pet insurance are expected to drive the embedded space in the short term but any product or service that involves risk or liability could benefit from embedded insurance. As the concept continues to grow, we can expect to see more creative uses of embedded insurance.
If you would like to learn more about Duck Creek’s embedded solutions, please reach out to Andrew at [email protected] and visit our website at https://www.duckcreek.com/embedded-insurance-emea/
*enables P&C carriers to deliver high-quality portal experiences resulting in more productive and engaged agents, brokers and other intermediaries