Following the disruption in 2020, a new landscape is emerging for the near future. 2025 is predicted to accelerate the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true transformation. According to a recent McKinsey Digital analysis, if the pace of the pre-coronavirus world was already fast, the luxury of time now seems to have disappeared completely and organisations that once mapped digital strategy in one-to-three-year phases must now scale their initiatives in a matter of days or weeks.

In 2021, our experts estimate that every company will focus on technology-fueled experiences, operations, products, and ecosystems as is evidenced in Forrester’s predictions for the next year. Besides, an ecosystem is like a living body that needs food (data, products, rules), water (continuous flow of customers), education (scorecard machine learning), and a daily routine and maintenance.

Much of the organisations’ success will depend on how quickly and how well they harness technology to build platforms that differentiate their business and help their people do their best work. Thereby the COVID-19 crisis became an accelerator that is pushing even the most reluctant organisations into a hyper-digital mode.

As McKinsey notes “Asian banks have swiftly migrated physical channels online, healthcare providers have moved rapidly into telehealth, insurers into self-service claims assessment, and retailers into contactless shopping and delivery.”

Annett Numa, Digital Transformation e-Estonia says “every citizen in Estonia saves 5 days and 2% of GDP per year just with the implementation of the digital signature”.

Disruptive technologies, including the mobile Internet, autonomous vehicles, and advanced genomics, have the potential to reshape the world in which we live and work in the next decade.

This means it is a time for action, a time to make bold moves forward with technology and prepare for “a world in which digital channels become the primary, and, in some cases, sole, customer-engagement model “according to the McKinsey analysis.

To accelerate digital adoption and meet the needs of a quickly changing world, in the following, we will delve into the top 25 trends in five different areas where we’ll see the extraordinary power of digital transformation in the next years.

Core Data and Analytics Trends

Data and Advanced Analytics

Over the next five years, the way data and analytics are produced, managed, and delivered will change. To influence enterprise-level strategy for global impact, data and analytics leaders must adopt technologies that optimize costs, solve data challenges, and drive business value according to a Gartner’s Predicts 2020 research.

• By 2022, 70% of organizations will rigorously track data quality levels via metrics, increasing data quality by 60% to significantly reduce operational risks and costs.

• By 2022, 40% of machine learning model development and scoring will be done in products that do not have machine learning as their primary goal.

• By 2023, 90% of the world’s top 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics governance initiatives.

• By 2023, 90% of the world’s top 500 companies will have converged analytics governance into broader data and analytics governance initiatives.
• By 2025, 80% of consumer or industrial products containing electronics will perform an analysis on the device.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation

AI is transforming the way we work and learn and the ways we access technology. To improve the worker experience and to develop work skills, application leaders must focus on innovation and the automation of routine and non-routine tasks with the help of AI.

• In 2021 more than 60% of B2B sellers will be enabled by AI and automation.
• By 2022, the number of application development engineers building machine learning (ML) models using automated ML services will increase from 1% to 25%, reducing the need for data scientists.
• By 2023, cloud-based AI will increase 5x from 2019, making AI one of the top cloud services.
• 69% of what a manager currently does will be automated by 2024, requiring a complete overhaul of the role of the manager.
• By 2025, 47% of learning and development budgets will be at risk of being wasted as AI eliminates 67% of on the job, task-based learning opportunities.

IT Infrastructure Trends

Application Architecture, Development, Integration, and Platforms

The entire business software landscape, including business applications and architectures, will change significantly in the next upcoming years.

• By 2023, more than 50% of large enterprises will adopt more robotic process automation platform as a service (rpaPaaS) than on-premises RPA.
• By 2023, more than 50% of new integration technologies evaluated will include AI among key criteria for simplifying integration.
• By 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity.
• By 2025, 40% of business capabilities will be delivered using aggregator platforms from multiple providers that automatically integrate functions from core ERP vendors.
• By 2023, 40% of professional workers will orchestrate their business application experiences and capabilities like they do their music streaming experience.

Industry Trends

Insurance

While the insurance industry has been on the road to digital transformation for years, few CIOs have reached high maturity levels. In 2021, the key focus for insurers will be controlling claims costs, and is expected an increase of smart analytics investments to identify leakage potential at the first notice of loss.

• In 2021 containing claim leakage becomes the top priority for general insurance.
• By 2025, the Global Insurtech Market revenue is expected to reach 10.14 billion, growing at a CAGR of 10.80% during the period 2019-2025.
• By 2025 three business models are expected to lead the market:

1. Core insurer: organisations focusing on core insurance products and skills ensuring a perfect customer experience
2. Beyond insurer: organisations with additional services providing added-value for the customer
3. Exponential insurer: organisations leveraging external partnerships to grow in a new market and being part of winning ecosystems

• Cognitive computing will remake business processes and it is expected that these technologies will have reached maturity by 2025
• By 2050, more than 100 billion connected devices are expected to be in use; this trend will generate an impressive amount of data that has great potential to be leveraged in risk and other insurance activities.

Banking

Ecosystems will empower banking customers and erode banks’ traditional value propositions. The end customers will engage with financial institutions and bank products both directly and indirectly through 3rd parties.

• By 2023, increased data availability created by customers sharing their ecosystems will compel 25% of financial institutions to use this data to create new revenue streams.
• By 2023, public or private cloud will each account for 5% of commercial off-the-shelf core banking installations.
• By 2024, 40% of large enterprises will leverage AI capabilities in their sourcing process.
• By 2024, 10% of financial services institutions (FSIs) will open their vendors’ financial technology (fintech) ecosystem platforms to end clients, allowing customers to create their customized solutions.
• By 2025, 25% of payment delivery channels will be led by nonincumbent, third party digital ecosystems, forcing banks to participate or risk losing market share.

Conclusions

None of us knows for certain what the future will hold, but we all have a responsibility to be thinking about what’s likely to happen and to prepare for it.

Concluding this journey, Adam Burr, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Softelligence, remarked that: “it has been widely acknowledged that the insurance sector has been slow to tackle the market’s outdated processes and embed technology that is readily available. It has taken the disruption of Covid-19 to truly identify, for all to see, the industry’s commercial vulnerabilities. Many organisations’ saving grace was the fact that every business was thrust into the same level playing field. This disruption provided an opportunity to pause and reflect. The reaction, however, will require a fresh and out-of-the-box approach, to avoid the same thinking which had created its inability to react.”

“I anticipate that for the market to be agile, move with strategic focus, and to ignite human creativity, Data is the key foundation. When embedded, the sky is the limit with the endless possibilities, whether that is utilising machine learning (ML) to strengthen underwriting and actuarial accuracy or integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) to prevent claims before they occur. The truth is data has become the new oil. The key to transformation is simple, it’s merely to start. Begin with a project that quickly delivers visible value and provides confidence in maintaining momentum through the business. I believe, Covid-19 will be the wake-up call the insurance market inevitably needed”  is how Adam Burr sees the future of digital transformation and data in the insurance market.

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Resources:

• Mc Kinsey Global Institute, Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy
• Gartner, 100 Data and Analytics Predictions Through 2024
• Forrester, European Predictions 2021 Guide
• IBM, Insurance 2025: Reducing risk in an uncertain future