Launching an insurance product routinely takes six to 18 months and 70%-80% of IT budgets are consumed by maintenance rather than innovation, a new paper from Insurtech Australia and Singapore business InsureMO says.

Fragmented data systems prevent organisations from achieving “even a basic unified view” of their customers, but InsureMO says faster innovation does not require replacing core systems and its platform enables faster market entry through AI.

“It demands a shift in mindset to, ‘How do we use AI to build a high-velocity delivery capability around it?’ ” the paper says.

In a recent proof of concept with HDI, InsureMO delivered an agricultural insurance product in 15 business days. All the application code was generated by AI.

IA CEO Simone Dossetor says as AI accelerates the development and launch of new propositions, success will depend on closer collaboration between product, risk, compliance and IT teams.

“We encourage insurers to embrace a 30-day challenge – an opportunity to explore what is truly possible and reframe their approach to change,” she said.

“This provides a practical way for insurers to assess their readiness and position themselves to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

“Organisations can better identify bottlenecks, streamline hand-offs and uncover pathways to greater agility.”

The research follows a roundtable hosted by IA and InsureMO in Sydney in May.

It examines the structural barriers to speed in insurance, introduces AI-augmented software engineering for insurance product delivery, and presents a practical framework for compressing product launch timelines from months to days. 

Find research papers Using AI to Build High-Velocity Insurance Capability here and From Idea to Market in Days: The Business Leader’s Guide here.