Boston, Massachusetts, September 19, 2016 – Strategy Meets Action (SMA), a leading insurance strategic advisory firm, announced the winners of the SMA Innovation in Action Awards today during the annual SMA Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston. The 2016 insurer winners are Figo Pet Insurance, Meteo Protect, Motorists Insurance Group, and Texas Mutual Insurance Company. The solution provider winners are Baseline Telematics, Life.io, Octo Telematics, and Pristine.
"Our annual awards program gives SMA the opportunity to recognize truly innovative projects, solutions, and initiatives within the insurance industry. In the five years of the program, we have seen clear evidence of the incredible strides being made within our industry by insurers and solution providers alike. It’s a great time to be in insurance,” said Karen Furtado, SMA Partner. “We congratulate all of the winners and participants on their successes and creativity in reinventing insurance for the 21st century!"
For the past five years, the SMA Innovation in Action Awards have been presented annually to celebrate innovation in the insurance industry. SMA launched this awards program to recognize projects and solutions that enable an insurance company to advance on their transformation journey toward becoming a Next-Gen Insurer. The awards spotlight both insurers and solution providers who completed transformational projects or initiatives in the past year that have reshaped one or more of the Next-Gen Insurer foundational areas: business model, customer, innovative culture, and technology and data. Innovative approaches in these foundational areas give insurers an ideal opportunity to differentiate themselves in the market as Next-Gen Insurers – the market leaders of tomorrow.
The insurer winners of 2016 SMA Innovation in Action Awards, in alphabetical order, are:
- Figo Pet Insurance, for their unique approach to the pet insurance business model through the innovative use of emerging technologies. Their proprietary Pet Cloud platform offers policyholders real-time pet GPS tracking, cloud storage for medical records, mobile claims filing, social pet profiles, a pet-friendly business locator, texts and alerts for upcoming shots and appointments, and more. Figo’s reimagination of the pet insurance value proposition is focused on making life easier for people and their pets. Their holistic approach offers a meaningful example of how the insurance industry can reinvent its business models and customer engagement strategies for the digital world.
- Meteo Protect, for offering customized, data-driven agricultural insurance for weather-related risks. Customers can choose each parameter of their weather policies, including crop, period of coverage, specific weather event and intensity, and payment amount. Meteo Protect’s Vivaldi platform aggregates huge volumes of weather-related data from 40 years of climate history; current readings from satellites, sensors, gauges, and other global weather data sources; and commodity prices and crop yields. Meteo Protect’s focus on the changing nature of weather risks and emphasis on the uncertain future expands the possibilities for the personalization of insurance products and services.
- Motorists Insurance Group, for creating an innovation space as part of the cultural shift necessary for their 10-year vision of organizational transformation. This vision hinges on Motorists’ reinvention as an “85-year-old startup” designed for innovation and collaboration. The Intersection, their new collaboration space, represents a complete redesign of a 1940s space to prioritize natural light, bright colors, and transparency. It facilitates global collaboration through the use of cutting-edge technology, enabling work to shift seamlessly across time zones and continents. Motorists demonstrates how no company is ever too established to change, and that vast and intangible changes like developing an innovative culture can start small and still have a big impact.
- Texas Mutual Insurance Company, for “Safety in a Box,” their groundbreaking virtual-reality app designed to teach construction workers the value of following safety procedures. The app is available for download to a user’s phone, which can be inserted into a Google Cardboard virtual-reality viewer for an interactive, 360-degree viewing experience in English or Spanish. The user can experience the four most dangerous construction site accidents, like a collapsing trench, and see how their safety choices determine the outcome of each scenario. Texas Mutual is distributing the boxes for free at construction industry events to promote workplace safety and reinvent their role as a workers’ comp insurer.
Today, SMA released a compendium of case studies detailing the success stories of the four winners and the 16 other insurers that participated in the SMA Innovation in Action Awards program. This comprehensive report is available here.
The solution provider winners of 2016 SMA Innovation in Action Awards, in alphabetical order, are:
- Baseline Telematics, for their BaseDrive telematics solution, which leverages a mobile app and in-car Bluetooth dongle to give insurers everything they need to create their own usage-based insurance (UBI) programs.
- Life.io, for their policyholder engagement platform for physical, emotional, and financial health, which uses behavioral economics, predictive analytics, and personalized content to drive high levels of sustained policyholder engagement and the achievement of personal goals.
- Octo Telematics, for their telematics offerings that deliver behavioral, contextual, and driving analytics, enabling insurers to provide value-added services for policyholders such as UBI pricing, loyalty programs, vehicle diagnostics, location-based services, mobile connections, and more.
- Pristine, for Pristine Eyesight, a video communication platform for smart glasses (e.g., Google Glass) and mobile devices that enables long-distance collaboration between field professionals via real-time audio and video connection.
A collection of case studies profiling the four solution provider winners, with details on the rest of the 27 solution provider awards submissions, will be released in early October.
The SMA Innovation in Action Awards were presented at the SMA Summit, a sold-out, must-attend event for insurance leaders who are thinking, planning, and executing toward the goal of becoming a Next-Gen Insurer. This annual event is an ideal opportunity to gather, network, and gain insights into the forces that are transforming the industry. This year, attendees heard from industry experts and learned directly from this year’s award winners about how to reframe today’s challenges as new opportunities and how to build bridges from insurance today to the insurance industry of the future.
Inquiries for additional information about the award program or the 2016 winners should be directed to Karen Furtado, SMA Partner, at kfurtado@strategymeetsaction.com or 978.239.2741.