OIP’s Subasic: Insurers can better allocate their tech budgets

Outsource Insurance Professionals (OIP) has called on insurers to better understand their tech objectives when allocating budgets, warning the sector is trailing other industries in technology implementation.

Chief product officer Mladen Subasic told The Insurer TV some insurance firms were making “adverse choices” when allocating their technology budgets.

“Where they could do better is actually examining the particular use of a particular technology that they're using,” Subasic said, warning that if a technology’s purpose doesn’t meet a firm’s end goal it will just create “more disparity”.

He also warned of the dangers of focusing purely on large language model use just “because it seems like the only solution that will change the game”.

“That can hurt the business a lot if [it’s] not applied properly, because it can create even more fragmentation in the process.”

Despite his belief that the sector is “trailing compared to other industries” on technology implementation, Subasic expressed excitement at some industry developments.

“Now [in] insurance, we are actually seeing the impact of software as a service and big data, so we do see a lot of good, healthy data warehouse projects collecting all that information [and] storing it properly,” said Subasic.

“And we see more and more tools moving to the cloud, which enables multi-connectivity, so, in that way, we see a lot of good movement.”

“Where we also see the first signs of much bigger reward is with these AI solutions, which are gaining traction and creating the first glimpses of value.”

Internally, Subasic said Nevada-headquartered OIP is focusing on its core competencies by ensuring staff can tackle “more complex underwriting flows and policy operational flows”.

“What's been important for us is how to actually replicate that model so it can be scaled into a global delivery service,” he said.

“We've been working hard on incubating these hubs in India and multiple European countries, so we can provide that scale to our customers at this point of our growth.”

Another focus area is around “doubling down” on research and development and product initiatives, particularly around data science and AI.

“What we have been working on [recently] is increasing [the] impact of those technologies, combining them into an offering that can cover even more use cases and solve more problems for our market,” Subasic said.

“We are moving towards supporting our market, to move into multiple areas compared to just [a] vertical-based type of a service.”

Watch the full interview to hear more about: