metaverse technologies

As the life insurance industry continues on its digital transformation journey, a new technology is on the horizon—the metaverse. 

According to the Accenture Business Trends Survey, respondents from companies that have some form of a strategy around the metaverse believe that in the next three years, a 4.2% share of their revenues will come from new products, services or business models related to the metaverse. This represents a value of $1 trillion globally.

Accenture sees the metaverse as a continuum of converging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), blockchain, digital twins, internet of things (IoT), cloud, digital currencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), social platforms, e-commerce, and digital marketplaces. What it means for life insurers depends on the combination of technologies and how they can be used to add value for customers, employees and stakeholders. 

For life insurers, these technologies could impact how we protect and underwrite risk. We may see a new generation of insurance technologies—”insurtech 2.0″—that can leverage these new and emerging technologies to not only improve risk assessment, but also to simplify life insurance processes across the value chain. So, instead of focusing on front- or back-office efficiencies alone, which can provide incremental improvements, insurers can apply these technologies using a holistic digital strategy for 360-degree value.

It’s encouraging to see that more insurers are updating their core insurance processing systems to accelerate digital transformation, a move that could position them for success in the metaverse. They’re extending the value of these systems using application programming interface (APIs)—often pre-integrated with the core system of record—to quickly enable added front- and back-office capabilities from third-party providers. Typically, automation is layered in to further accelerate digital processes like underwriting and claims. 

As metaverse technologies mature, insurers could have even greater potential to interact with