Platforms are about Existing Business – Platforms are about keeping the customer
Traditionally Insurance is focusing
New Business. Mainly every monetary incentive priorities the new customer.
And so do insurance products, processes and technology.
This is different to some other successful business lines and models, for example the emerging platform business. Sustainable ecosystem and platform models try to focus the existing customer by serving him as best as possible.
This historic difference explains why it’s today rather difficult to transfer the insurance business and thinking into a platform and ecosystem oriented world with its high customer interactions and cross selling opportunities.
Successful platforms, like Amazon, always have focused and preferred the existing customer compared to just attracting new customers. They try to reduce (technology and service) friction for this group as much as possible.
Insurance companies in contrast usually reduce friction for the new customer.
Why OpenCologne is important for a Sustainable Platform Business
And this where OpenCologne comes into play. OCGN is much more a business than a technology strategy. It lays the foundation for reducing the today’s digital friction for existing insurance customers.
With OCGN the customer receives a lightweight and friction-less possibility to use his Insurance Identity and corresponding data and services with an Open API approach. He receives a ‘
Take-away-API’ and
‘Take-away-Identity‘ for nearly every context and application. The services necessarily don’t need to be provided by the insurance company. These extend the insurances core values with new added values by keeping the binding to the insurer.
All the user has to do is to login with his existent insurance credentials, no extra registration or extra KYC processes and governance are usually necessary. No single application, no single portal – go with your insurance data where the value ist.
But extra and new values will only be created by external innovation power, if enough known customers can be reached by these. A customer only wants to become a known one, if the ‘known’ attribute pays off for him with a broad and rich offer.
This is why a sustainable platform strategy has to focus the
known, IDENTIFIED customer with extra and non-core services – and the open cooperation with other verticals.
Both isn’t typically within the traditional DNA of an insurer.
