Following their acquisition by Thomson Reuters in October 2019, Insurance Nexus, the team behind the world’s leading insurance events, are making their incredible insights and analysis collections available for free in a new industry intelligence hub
The acquisition combines Reuters’ globally trusted news brand, scale, and editorial excellence with Insurance Nexus’s deep expertise in highly specialized events and content production for key decision-makers right across the insurance industry.
To understand how the newly launched Insight Hub fits into their long-term vision for the insurance industry, Insurance Nexus sat down with the sector head and driving force behind this new initiative, Emma Sheard, to find out more.
What role does Insurance Nexus play in the insurance industry and what business intelligence does it provide?
In short, Insurance Nexus provides business insights and analysis to the whole insurance industry. Though we're most known for doing that through our events, we also produce a great swathe of business intelligence in conjunction with these events to engage our global audience in the run up to every conference.
Historically, we’ve done this through free to download whitepapers and reports but have increasingly looked to webinars where key decision-makers and influential stakeholders can share best practice in their industry directly with the market between events as well.
How does the Insurance Insight Hub create new value for insurance professionals on top of the services and events Insurance Nexus already provides?
As mentioned earlier, we’d traditionally release major content and webinars in advance of our events, but these would only be marketed for a short time. The Insight Hub doesn’t just give us an opportunity, for the first time, to house all this industry leading content in one place, it also gives us the scope, resources and platform to create, commission and curate a far broader collection of business-critical intelligence than ever before.
As with our events, the Insight Hub will serve the full value chain of job roles and disciplines contained within the insurance industry. No matter whether you’re involved in product development, claims, or innovation, and whether that’s part of any number of insurance lines,, we can now house a far greater library of content than has previously been possible, and address your day-to-day challenges directly, and in detail.
We’re lucky to have a unique legacy of creating platforms that bring the insurance industry’s biggest and most influential names together to share their expertise, so it’s exciting to be able to offer this digitally through the hub in addition to our leading conferences and exhibitions.
That’s why we hope this Insight Hub will become a valuable tool used by insurance professionals globally to discover the latest trends before they happen, work with our network of experts to uncover solutions before they’re needed and unlock the full potential of their business units no matter which line(s) of insurance they operate in.
In turn, we also hope to act as a catalyst for insurance businesses and professionals looking to make the leap into sharing insights of their own; from technology innovation initiatives to new and exciting ways to reach and serve customers and clients – you can see that it’s a really wide reaching and exciting project to launch!
Why is Insurance Nexus offering this new service?
It’s clear that insights, data and reliable information are more important to decision making than ever before, and while we have facilitated knowledge exchange chiefly through our conferences in the past, we cannot be ignorant to the fact that conference attendance can’t always be possible for all attendees – the current COVID-19 crisis is perhaps a more extreme example of this than we could have anticipated but helps serve the value of digital knowledge sharing.
Our strengths have always been in unlocking the world’s most influential decision-makers and being the vehicle for them to deliver new insights and business critical intelligence to the masses. As a result, it is quite natural for us to be looking for new opportunities to share this treasure trove of insights and increase engagement amongst our audiences while we continue to grow.
As I have said before, we now have the platform to do this, to share industry leading insights and deploy our networks to achieve this. It’s just that now really couldn’t be a better time to launch this platform and ensure that our readers can access critical insights that can help them optimize processes, products and services in what is now a time of increased uncertainty and pressure to deliver excellent customer experiences.
Does this mean that people are turning away from events?
No not at all, as we all know there's nothing as good as face to face networking. However, we can’t ignore the fact that large gatherings aren’t a priority right now - that’s why we will look to ensure that our network can still access business critical insights in the interim.
What kind of audience does Insurance Nexus serve and how engaged is its audience to digital content?
All our in-depth analysis pieces, reports and articles are research focused and look to understand what senior level executives in the insurance industry need to know about right now to make better informed decisions.
Our current network stands at around 70,000 global insurance professionals, but we can actually reach ten-fold that figure, 700,000+ when we consider our ability to leverage multiple mainstream and niche industry channels to get all our content out and visible to the insurance industry as a whole. We’ve always looked to develop close relationships and partnerships with the principal associations, magazines and trade publications that serve each sub-market of the insurance industry no matter if we’re talking claims, product, technology or innovation.
Add to this the fact that we’re very digitally apt, possess an engaged social media following and have been very successful at engaging people that are hungry to learn, it’s a good time to be launching the new Insights Hub.
What do people need to do to access the hub? What does it cost?
It's really easy. All you have to do is visit https://events.insurancenexus.com/content/ and find the Insight Hub tab where all our content is hosted for free – it really is that simple!
What are some of the main trends that we are seeing having an impact across the insurance industry?
Digital disruption is more real than ever before. The pandemic has acted as a catalyst for carriers to act on their innovation plans right now, and make sure they’re well placed to serve customers at the high level that is expected, and continue to do so once we come out the other side. How can insurers use technologies such as analytics, blockchain and cloud to their advantage? Insurance companies that can embrace this change and have the right business intelligence and resources in place to act swiftly through efficient technology deployment, will be the ones that safeguard their future standing in the market.
We are also seeing that customers, their demands, and expectations are changing. In an age of immediacy, constant change and overwhelming choice where loyalty is no longer a given, the industry has to extend beyond its core products and services if it is to retain its customer base.
One factor that has been made all the more important as of late is that the environment is becoming increasingly competitive and incumbent insurers cannot afford to rest on their laurels. It will be interesting to see how the industry uses M&A, equity partnerships and alliances to advance growth and fast-track innovation plans. Is internal innovation still enough to guarantee success, or will effective partnerships pave the way to long-term wins? We believe the winners will be those that can forge alliances with innovative start-ups; ally with InsurTech; and consolidate with their peers.
The last point I would make relates to product development. Preventative, as well as protective approaches seems to be where the industry is heading. The question is, to what extent will service-based strategies and innovative products change the insurance industry as a whole? The traditional approach of selling protective products is nowhere near enough for the insurer of the future. Success will come from new service-based models, innovative products and a greater focus on prevention.
As you can see, with the scope of change under way, and the breadth of efforts being made, there really is an awful lot for our Insight Hub to tap into!
Are there any examples of content currently available through the Insight Hub or soon to be available that kind of touch on these trends?
I'm glad you asked! There is so much content on our Insight Hub; we have provided some very valuable recent webinars from our claims, auto and analytics and AI portfolios that touch on the above themes. Customer experiences and expectations, product innovation and strategic innovation planning are all examined in detail by our network of senior thought leader speakers. I would also add there is much more on the way through the summer of 2020 and beyond as we look to bring business intelligence into the industry’s home offices!
What if I wanted to create content with Insurance Nexus for its audience, what should I do?
The best and simplest thing to do is to reach out to our team and let us know what you're thinking. We can then work with you to advise which products would be the best fit for getting your message and insights out into the insurance community. You can reach my colleague directly at graham.proud@insurancenexus.com. He can then point you in the right direction based on your individual needs.
I would add that we do the hard work to make sure we get your insights and technical knowhow in front of the professionals and decision-makers of your choice. To achieve this, we have to be very dynamic in terms of the products that we deliver. It might be that a report is the best option, or a webinar but whether we decide to commission or collaborate on a whitepaper, interview, podcast, video we see this very much a partnership. We will never sacrifice on quality when serving the market’s needs.
What kind of return on investment will I see when working with Insurance Nexus? What kinds of leads have been generated before?
The return on investment really depends on what you’re looking for, we take a very qualitative over quantitative approach.
This means if success for you is getting your content in front of fifty spot-on people then we’ll target them directly and use these lead generation metrics to measure success.
Conversely, if you’re looking for as broad exposure as possible to niche markets, say chief claims officers in North America, we’ll work with all our best-fit partners to see that your content is front and centre in their minds.
The Insight Hub is live, free and available at https://events.insurancenexus.com/content/
Please contact graham.proud@insurancenexus if you have any questions.