Strategic partnerships in insurance foster innovation, enabling insurers to expand into new markets by leveraging complementary expertise and resources.
Insurance companies today face a critical choice: innovate or stagnate.
But innovation doesn't always mean starting from scratch. Sometimes, the most powerful innovations come from building bridges – connecting existing expertise, resources, and technologies in novel ways.
This bridge-building approach is at the heart of successful insurance partnerships. By leveraging the strengths of specialized partners, insurers can expand into new areas without the need to develop every capability in-house. This strategy combines the best of both worlds: the agility of a startup with the resources and experience of established players.
RGA’s Strategic Growth Solutions team recently stood at the center of such a partnership, demonstrating how this collaborative approach can lead to remarkable growth and innovation. This experience offers valuable lessons for insurers looking to chart new paths to success.
In late 2019, a leading property and casualty (P&C) insurance company sought to expand into the life market. While the carrier excelled at meeting its customers’ P&C needs, those same customers had to turn elsewhere for life coverage. This created attrition, as customers opted for insurers offering a more comprehensive product suite.
With a world-class distribution network, a loyal customer base, and a proven track record in scaling insurance businesses, the carrier was well-prepared for the challenge. What they lacked, however, was the infrastructure and domain expertise required to effectively develop and implement life insurance products.
To bridge this gap, they sought a reinsurance partner with deep experience in pricing and underwriting life business – a partner that could help address key challenges, introduce the right external solution providers, and offer a road map for scalable, long-term business growth.
RGA brought broad capabilities and third-party relationships for supplementary services to help the carrier expand into this new line of business. By bringing a wide range of resources and human talent together, the partnership became a formidable team of specialists focused on developing an industry-leading process. Aura Next, for example, RGA's digital underwriting platform, provided a seamless and unique automated customer experience tailored specifically for the carrier.
Following a successful pilot with a small group of consumers, the initiative expanded into more markets. Initial results have shown a remarkable growth trajectory. Increased marketing investment, a second product series launch with more competitive pricing, and application of RGA's fluidless underwriting innovations led to key milestones that included:
Today, RGA supports the monitoring and underwriting rule adjustments to refine the program as it grows and new learning develops.
What should insurers keep top of mind when entering a new line of business? Two key lessons emerge from RGA's case study.
Effective bridge-building in the insurance industry means leveraging existing expertise rather than starting at page one. Providers across the value chain can bring best-in-class expertise, experience, and resources to the project.
Insurers don't need to construct every element of their partner ecosystem. RGA, for example, brings clients a diverse network of third-party relationships – proven, vetted collaborators and their associated resources. The result is a team of experts from a wide range of areas working toward a common goal.
Key benefits for insurers from a strategic partnership with a reinsurer can include:
Reinsurers such as RGA heavily invest in research, actuarial modeling, and market intelligence, giving their insurer partners deeper, wider expertise. They also help their partners to confidently drive innovation by sharing in the risk, allowing insurers to more safely experiment with novel product features.
In theory, good communication is simple. It involves just three elements: a sender, a message, and a listener. The problem is noise – anything that interferes with the message as it travels from sender to listener.
Noise is an all-too-common occurrence in new reinsurance partnerships.
On the insurer's side, it is vital to understand and respect your reinsurer's areas of expertise. By remaining open to suggestions, even if they go against "the way things have always been done," insurers are maximizing the benefits of the partnership.
On the reinsurer's side, the key is to honor their client's culture and experience. No two insurers are the same, and trying to apply cookie-cutter solutions to every partnership is destined to fail. Before entering a partnership, insurers should ask for examples of a reinsurer's bespoke solutions for a variety of clients.
Once an agreement is reached, the reinsurer needs to keep the client – and the client's customers – at the center of the relationship. The win-win occurs when the two come together around common goals and eliminate the noise.
In today's complex insurance landscape, the path to growth and innovation often lies in strategic partnerships. By building bridges between complementary strengths and expertise, insurers can expand their capabilities, enter new markets, and better serve their customers.
The question is not whether to go it alone or seek partnerships. Rather, it is how to build the most effective bridges for your business.
Contact us today to start building your strategic bridge with RGA.
