Spotlighting Customer-Centric ‘Design Thinking’ at the Global InsurTech Summit 2025
The Global InsurTech Summit in London continues to be an essential event for exploring innovation across the insurance industry, and this year was no exception. With packed rooms, high-energy discussions, and thought-provoking presentations, the 2025 event stood out as one of the busiest and most engaging yet.
Sponsorship Highlights
As a sponsor, INSTANDA assumed a central role in driving the conversation on customer-centric innovation. We hosted a 10-minute live demo of our platform, highlighting the agility and flexibility it offers insurers to launch new propositions at speed and adapt to evolving customer demands. Additionally, INSTANDA facilitated a dynamic roundtable discussion on “Beyond the Hype: Practical Strategies for Customer-Centric Innovation and Scalable Growth.”
Key Roundtable Takeaways
Hosted by INSTANDA's Business Development Director, Andy Watts, the roundtable discussion was a productive exchange of ideas on the challenges and opportunities associated with innovation in the insurance sector. Participants included strategists and innovators from leading insurance carriers, offering diverse and expert perspectives.
Here’s a summary of the key themes explored during the session:
Reinventing Insurance in a Complex, Regulated Landscape
The insurance industry has historically been built to prioritise control and risk management, often resulting in lengthy, rigid product development cycles. However, insurers today face increasing pressure to shift from "18-month roadmaps" to agile, deployable solutions that rapidly respond to market changes.
The roundtable spotlighted a significant mindset shift in the industry toward "proof of value" over "proof of concept," emphasising the need for testing and iterating solutions to identify their practical benefits early. This iterative approach, grounded in design thinking, empowers insurers to trial ideas, assess their impact and refine before scaling.
The Role of Technology in Driving Agility
Discussions examined the importance of advanced technology platforms, like INSTANDA, in fostering greater innovation. Legacy systems often inhibit insurers from experimenting and evolving quickly; modern, adaptable platforms allow for faster product launches, seamless integration with partners, and customer-centric enhancements.
What stood out was that technology is no longer the major bottleneck in transformation. Today, the challenges lie more with organisational structures and cultural inertia. The need for an Innovation Centre within insurers was given as a solution to foster new ideas while maintaining operational stability.
Practical Strategies for Balancing Speed and Quality
One of the central questions asked during the session was how insurers can strike the balance between moving swiftly and maintaining the quality and scalability of their offerings. Collaborative exchanges suggested actionable strategies:
- Lean prototyping through agile platforms: Start small, test and measure impact, and refine as needed before going to full-scale production.
- Embedded innovation hubs: Dedicated internal teams or hubs can serve as incubators for testing new ideas and exploring customer-centric solutions while avoiding disruption to day-to-day operations.
- Cross-domain integration of processes, data and people: Transformation demands a cohesive approach across process, technology and human expertise, ensuring alignment and consistency throughout.
The Human Element and Cultural Change
Participants agreed that successfully adopting these innovations often requires changes in mindset and corporate culture. Organisational resilience is key to absorbing rapid change while anchoring transformation in practical business outcomes. Roundtable attendees noted that while the industry was historically resistant to change, there is growing recognition of the need to experiment and adapt to meet shifting consumer demands.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Insurance Innovation
Although not a core focus of the roundtable, artificial intelligence did emerge as a topic of discussion at other Summit sessions. There is a marked appetite among insurers for leveraging AI-driven solutions, but large-scale implementation remains in its infancy. Many insurers are experimenting with AI features at a smaller scale, integrating them into specific projects rather than rolling them out across the organisation.
What became clear from these presentations was that for AI adoption to succeed at scale, insurers must first address foundational systems and data integration issues. Some notable insights included:
- The emergence of AI agents capable of mimicking human behaviours to revolutionise operational efficiency.
- The importance of aligning AI capabilities with broader innovation strategies to foster seamless collaboration between technology and human expertise.
INSTANDA’s Platform Demonstration
During our demo session, attendees had the opportunity to see first-hand how the INSTANDA platform enables insurers to launch hyper-personalised products at speed.
Our agility message resonated with attendees, echoing the broader themes of the event. We were especially pleased to showcase how INSTANDA supports insurers in breaking free from the constraints of traditional processes and achieving scalable, measurable growth.
Looking Ahead
This year’s Global Insurtech Summit reinforced the pivotal role technology and innovation play in shaping the future of the insurance industry.
For insurers looking to stay ahead of the competition in an evolving landscape, INSTANDA empowers insurers to move faster where it matters most. We invite you to explore how our platform can help you turn bold ideas into actionable results.
