DIGIN 2023 Preview: Nationwide talks embedded insurance

Have you heard a lot about “Embedded insurance,” and have some questions about what it is, where to start, and how to form a digital strategy around it? At DIGIN 2023, Nationwide’s Rebecca Nickoll, assistant vice president of Strategic Partnerships and Brian Disbrow, assistant vice president of Tech Enterprise Partnerships, will have the answers you seek in their session, “Unleashing the Power of Embedded Insurance.” They spoke with Digital Insurance’s Grace Crane to preview their talk.

Digital Insurance: You’re planning to delve into the opportunities as well as the challenges surrounding embedded insurance. But let’s start with a definition. Can you tell me how you explain “embedded insurance” as a concept?

Rebecca Nickoll, Nationwide

Rebecca Nickoll, Nationwide: It’s when the insurance carrier combines their customer journey with the journey of another company – taking two customer purchasing paths and making a new one to offer insurance and protection solutions. It could be in an industry-adjacent company; for example, we’re offering insurance in the context of a consumer purchasing a product that isn’t insurance, like maybe buying their car or getting a mortgage. It really provides the customer with a more seamless and convenient experience to get their insurance. So we’re trying to meet customers where they’re conducting other business to give them access to insurance products.

Revolutionizing any one of these situations – what Nationwide would call Mission Moment that Matters, of you when you are having an accident, when you are buying a car, there’s certain times where an embedded journey will not just create a more seamless experience with a company like Nationwide or a partner, but it really has the opportunity to drastically improve that customer’s experience, to the point where it can be incredibly differentiating.

Digital Insurance: How do digital solutions and technology enable embedded insurance, and how do those work?

Brian Disbrow: If I think about a core capability that’s really required for companies to offer embedded, it’s clearly understanding how digital technologies like APIs are coming together in order to expose that value chain in new and novel ways, as Rebecca said. In the way Nationwide thinks about it, APIs are the core technology powering embedded insurance. One of my roles here is to run our API platform – we call it our partner platform. 

Brian Disbrow, Nationwide

Other things that really are required to go to market [include] white-labeling products and a really robust compensation strategy. You [need to] understand what a business strategy would be around you offering protection products, depending on what partner needs are. We’re a very highly regulated industry. If you don’t have a clear and robust compensation strategy or really, you hamper your ability to have multiple solutions that you can go to market with.

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Digital Insurance: What are the benefits of offering embedded insurance products – specifically, what is your goal in the kinds of services you provide with these products with embedded insurance?

Disbrow: I think the No. 1 value is it’s a customer journey. We’re creating new and novel experiences that create ways that you can seamlessly integrate industry-adjacent Nationwide insurance protection products. All of that is there powering the idea that that member experience has been improved.

Nickoll: It is about the customer experience. While certainly a lot of consumers want to continue to do business through an insurance agent, as life becomes more and more digitized, I think there’s a growing segment that wants a digital experience wrapped in another experience.

Digital Insurance: What kind of growth can we expect to see with embedded insurance? 

Nickoll: We’re still all early in our journey on that. We can’t share specific growth numbers, but  a lot of companies are trying to figure [it] out. In terms of products, I think we believe offering a full embedded experience, not just being able to buy a policy, but also service the policy, the full insurance value chain is where there’s going to be value for the customer.