As part of the AAIS Webinar Series, AAIS hosted a virtual discussion on April 4, 2024, featuring AAIS Partner, GhostDraft. Moderated by John Kadous, AAIS Vice President of Products, the session explored the importance and challenges of speed to market. Joined by panelist Laurence White, Executive Vice President of Sales at GhostDraft, the two discussed modern technologies and innovations that can accelerate internal processes as well as how to balance speed and compliance. Kadous and White also offered successful strategies to improve operational efficiencies.
Defining Speed to Market
White defined “speed to market” as an insurer's ability to introduce new products or services or make updates to products that already exist as quickly and efficiently as possible. Speed to market covers the entire product development lifecycle, beginning with product ideation, regulatory approvals, marketing and distribution, and finally, the ever-important need to deliver on customer engagement. “GhostDraft finds it critical for our customers and carriers to be first to market with product innovation by making sure that those products address emerging customer needs, especially when you look at the overriding context of being in a fast-paced environment and the need to have a significant competitive advantage,” White shared. “So, we work with insurers so that they can quickly adapt to those changing demands, but also position themselves to retain existing [customers] and attract new customers.” He clarified that speed to market is a continuous journey. “We like to work with our customers to ensure that they're fostering an innovative culture, making sure that they can easily collaborate around their organizations, and continuously improving, adapting, and evolving so that they can stay ahead of the competition,” he said.
Speed to Market Challenges
One challenge White has noticed with carriers achieving speed to market is the use of legacy systems and legacy processes. “The ability to be adaptive and to try and integrate new and responsive technologies within those legacy environments is pretty important,” said White. “But it can be very complex and time-consuming.”
There are also challenges with streamlining the different processes that relate to collaboration within the product and product development environment. “There are lots of stakeholders involved when you think about how an insurance product is created and moved through its lifecycle,” White stated. “The ability to accurately and effectively collaborate and communicate amongst all of the different departments within a carrier organization is a really critical part of the process.”
In addition, White has seen a lot of organizations struggling to remain compliant with regulators. “We have so many new requirements that are being established within the customer base and the policyholder base, which makes things more complicated and makes remaining compliant a little tougher,” White explained. He touched upon competitive pressures being a challenge to carriers as well. “Once you realize that somebody else has put something into market and you decide it’s a business that you want to be in, you've got to compete both with those traditional competitors and the big increase in insurtech startups that we're seeing in the marketplace today,” he said.
Balancing Speed and Compliance in Product Development
White acknowledged that speed is essential, but compliance is equally, if not more, critical. “There is no sense implementing the fastest technology if you can't ensure that you can remain compliant,” he advised. “That means reviewing and updating processes that exist to ensure that you're aligning the processes with new and emerging regulations that are coming from the industry.” To be able to quickly adapt and make changes rapidly, White suggested standardizing. “If you are standardizing, for example, with an AAIS product group, then that means you can take some of those decision points out of your processes,” he explained. “If you leverage something that's already compliant, then all you’ve got to do after that is ensure that you’re staying on top of it and continuing to meet all of the different obligations you have from a compliance and a regulatory perspective.”
How GhostDraft Helps Drive Speed to Market
GhostDraft offers a few unique ways to drive speed to market. One way is what White refers to as “unburdening.” “We're taking the burden away by making all of the changes that are required to remain compliant and remain consistent and remain competitive,” he shared. “I had a customer who, essentially, after implementing our solution, was able to move from the design phase to the development phase and through to the production process in just a couple of days, which would historically have taken them about three months to do.”
GhostDraft also utilizes migration to address speed to market. “We certainly see the inclusion of AI when it comes to being able to migrate a large body of content from one environment to another body of content,” White began. “At GhostDraft, we call it our document domain model. All of the data reference points and all of the business logic that is required to produce this form live in one area within the platform that's managed and owned by businesspeople.”
A significant amount of data mapping needs to happen with a library of documents, according to White, and GhostDraft can help with managing that. GhostDraft allows a carrier to develop those documents only once while having the ability to move the entire domain to a new administrative system without changing any of the business rules or logic that is employed to generate that form.
To view the full webinar, click on the video above.
Questions? Please reach out to any of the featured speakers through the contact information below.
John Kadous
Vice President of Products – AAIS
Laurence White
Executive Vice President of Sales – GhostDraft
