Why does PolicyDock even exist?

The simple answer ‘why not’, but that reason alone is never a good reason to do anything let alone start a new venture.

How about we begin with the pain — real pain. After exiting his business in China, our CEO had a freak accident and broke his leg (tibia + fibula, don’t ask how it happened, it’s rather embarrassing but he promises to tell the full story if you schedule a demo 🙈).

While lying in bed for 2 months he not only had to endure the physical pain, but also the mental pain of dealing with claims with his insurer. It was a pain on just how manual the process was, his insurer had an online claims filing portal (which only works from time-to-time, crashes on different browsers, and then logs you out if you have to refresh the page), but despite having to deal with that portal, he noticed other nuances:

• Even with an online portal, he was filling out manual pdf forms, which each time he had to print, sign, scan and re-upload (like why not just use e-signature and have an online form)
• There were endless email chains (even 4–5months after the accident) to reconcile billing with hospital vendors (the caste guys were not paid, the crutch guys needed to be paid first then claimed after, the surgeon was having a hard time getting the fees too even after guarantee pre-surgery, and issues like that kept going on and on)
• Filled out claims forms sometimes got rejected for no good reason e.g. the address had a misspelling with the invoice but the claims administrator only saw that problem after 26th time, so he had to call the physio to er-do the invoice under the correct spelling
• The time to payment was…. long…. 45 days minimum, didn’t know when and if he would get paid out
• The claims team rejected claims they shouldn’t have that were under the policy, only to go back and forth several times and accept it (lots of negative energy created 😡)
• Sometimes when he had to go for further rehabilitation, he had to get a doctor’s note to show that in fact he had broken his leg (like, check the x-ray!!!)

In short, he couldn’t believe it, it was the year 2019 and after living in Asia and being in Fintech for over 10 years, he had seen the enormous amount of innovation — he expected a simple app at the very least where all this admin could be handled quickly. Thereafter spending a couple of months with an IT solutions firm for the insurance industry he quickly realized how systemic this problem was: the majority of the industry relies on PDF’s and Excel spreadsheets as the mode of communication between departments. Not to mention that insurers were stuck on these archaic core legacy systems that took months and an expensive IT consultant (who bill by the HOUR!) to adjust or tailor, either for new business processes or to launch a new product. Furthermore, the IT solutions client’s kept asking for more cloud native solutions, they wanted it and were quite ashamed of being on core legacy systems.

Fast forward a few months and PolicyDock was born. The name was inspired by ‘Policy’, like an insurance policy, and ‘Dock’, from the cloud container microservice repository solution www.Docker.com. From there, the PolicyDock team started making conjectures about the future of insurance and how might carriers best be prepared, like:

• Are insurers more willing to ‘build or buy’ their software?
• With digital distribution channels increasing rapidly, how will insurers take advantage and be best placed to take advantage?
• How will insurers evolve current internal IT systems to get to seamless automation and better user experiences?
• How will change happen within the organization?
• Will insurers stick to one vendor when it comes to their core IT systems? Will this give them a core competitive advantage?
• How can insurers really take advantage of Big data and A.I.? Are they prepared to do so?
• How can insurers tap into the explosion of innovation that’s happening in insurtech right now?
• How can insurers have flexibility and convenience of switching different vendors?
• How can insurers launch more targeted niche, personalized insurance products specific in different distribution channels for different niche markets
• What implications of using a blockchain can further solidify an insurers product offering and trust?
• How can insurtechs best work with insurers, do they speak the same language?
• Why isn’t there an insurance operating system like Android or iOS specific for insurance giving the freedom to choose?
• Should insurance core systems be open source? What would happen if they are?
• How can insurers release more value to consumers?

We hope you follow us in our journey as we explore these questions and provide answers — as Steve Wozniak would say ‘the best way to predict the future is to invent it.’