Annap Derebail: Simplifying operations with advanced technology

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Annap Derebail, IBM’s Global Insurance Industry CTO within IBM’s Global Business Services Unit, now in IBM's payment center. Annap’s focus has always been on delivering impactful business outcomes by re-imagining user experiences. Today, Annap provides trusted advice to drive revenue growth for IBM’s clients by leveraging architectural leadership to transform their businesses through technology innovation. In this conversation, they cover the future of insurance and its implications for operations, how technology is a key enabler of growth today, and how insurers can simplify operations to build resilient business models. KEY TAKEAWAYS          There are many market forces disrupting traditional insurance models. Firstly, around customer expectations. Customers are increasingly looking towards an Amazon- or Google-like experience when dealing with their insurance. The implications for insurers include creating personalised offerings and providing high levels of service and responsiveness. There are two key advantages that incumbent insurers have over new entrants to the market. Certainly, new entrants are developing new business models and approaches to attracting and engaging customers. But I think the advantages for incumbents are their huge existing customer base – keeping a customer is six times easier than acquiring a new one. Secondly, by virtue of having been in business for so long, they are sitting on tons of data and have knowledge of customer transactions/interactions. That’s a rich oasis that can help them develop a better understanding of their customers and what they need. Insurers really need to reinvent how they think about risk and what sort of relationship they want with their customers. Reinventing that risk partnership and helping insurers with new risk experiences that offer personalised advice, and demonstrating a new risk partnership between the insurer and the customer. Being able to harvest the data can be done by taking a fresh look at historically operating processes in the enterprise, critical processes such as underwriting claims, but also all of the support processes like billing, customer support, policy maintenance, etc. Just by paying attention to driving intelligence into those processes using data, we’ve reduced customer churn by 15% by implementing a churn detection model. At the infrastructure level, I see many incumbent insurers still operating legacy IT systems and infrastructure. The immediate opportunity there is to migrate those onto a cloud-based platform. This brings inherent benefits, such as flexibility in scaling up and down in response to demand and market needs. You can access cloud-based services from anywhere in the world. BEST MOMENTS ‘The insurance industry needs to adapt and respond to new disruptors, and this response has to be driven by data and new technologies, and using them to gain a business advantage in the market.’ ‘Less than 10% of insurers have actually been able to meet what we call ‘the data dividend’, effective use of data in order to achieve competitive advantage because of a lack of knowledge of how to access data, how the data is siloed within the infrastructure of the business.’ ‘We can help drive a step change in the core productivity of incumbent insurers. About 60% of their costs go into legacy IT systems. Modernising by having multiple core systems in place and moving to a SaaS model reduces issues.’ ‘The typical underwriting or claims process tends to have heavy human involvement and requires a large number of steps in order to make decisions. The scope there is to effectively use the mountain of data that insurers are sitting on to present the right data to the right decision-makers at the right time – not just raw data, but insights drawn from it. – to improve the process and categorise incoming cases that can either be automated or need human intervention.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Annap Derebail has 20+ years of professional experience in systems and integration architecture, design, development, and management of complex industry solutions.  In his current role, he works with insurance customers worldwide to create innovative solutions for business problems, leveraging microservices and API-driven architecture, distributed, multi-tier systems, application integration architecture, AI/ML, blockchain, IoT, cloud computing, and service-oriented architecture. In the last five years, he has worked with worldwide financial services clients to provide trusted advice on their digital transformation initiatives, while serving as the leader of the global IBM insurance industry architect community.  His work with clients has spanned several application areas: Modernization architectures for insurance and banking, Blockchain applications in insurance, Enterprise architecture for aircraft systems health, Supply chain collaboration in automotive and retail, RFID-based track-and-trace solutions, Product design-to-manufacture integration, and Supply chain optimization.  Over the years, he has been IBM’s technical representative in industry standards bodies, including ACORD, BIAN, PDES Inc, STAR, and AIA.  He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Texas A&M University. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]