GENRIC Insurance, established in 2005, has adeptly carved out a formidable presence as a specialist insurer. Their strategic focus centres on empowering Underwriting Management Agencies (UMAs), brokers, and insurtech start-ups. The aim is to introduce highly specific insurance solutions to segments previously underserved.
Central to GENRIC’s ascendancy is their remarkable aptitude for achieving unparalleled speed-to-market. This capability sets them apart in a traditionally protracted industry. Their agility is a cornerstone of their operational philosophy, moving far beyond conventional 12-month product cycles. This enables new GENRIC insurance offerings to reach the market in mere days.
GENRIC’s vision is to be recognised as the innovative, unconventional, and agile insurer that disrupts with intelligence and integrity. This ethos of disruption is deeply embedded in their operational structure. It drives their quest for efficiency and responsiveness in the insurance sector.
The Shift to Specialisation
Initially, GENRIC found success with a broad spectrum of products, including traditional commercial and property & casualty lines. However, a pivotal decision 11 years ago saw the business narrow its focus exclusively to the niche insurance product sector. This strategic pivot opened new opportunities.
Simultaneously, this shift highlighted critical infrastructural limitations. They operated with two distinct policy administration systems. Each system boasted disparate functionalities, which severely hampered their ability to achieve a unified, centralised view of operations.
This fragmented approach was a significant impediment to their desired levels of flexibility and speed-to-market for new GENRIC insurance products. A more cohesive and adaptable technological backbone became imperative for their future growth.
Strategic Partnership with Genasys
The pressing need for an integrated system propelled GENRIC to seek a strategic partner. They envisioned a system capable of centralising their entire business. It needed to seamlessly integrate traditional insurance functionalities, such as backend processes with pro-rata consolidations.
Crucially, it also required bespoke flexibility for their highly specialised niche products. This exhaustive search led them to Genasys, a collaboration that would fundamentally redefine their capabilities and market approach.
“Genasys also ticked the functionality and financial boxes for what we needed,” the article notes, underscoring the comprehensive alignment between the two entities. The alliance was more than a mere vendor-client relationship.
It was conceived as a true partnership, designed to support GENRIC’s ambitious drive to build end-to-end solutions. This collaboration would enable them to develop novel products that significantly differentiate them from competitors.
There aren’t many companies that have the ability to deliver in the timeframes that we are able to. We feel we have the ability and connection to deliver what we need to with Genasys.
The Power of No-Code Product Building
A critical enabler of GENRIC’s transformative speed-to-market has been the robust, adaptable framework offered by the Genasys platform. This platform, particularly its implied no-code product building capabilities, proved essential.
While the term “no-code product building” itself isn’t explicitly articulated in the source material, the description of GENRIC’s requirements strongly suggests such a system. It allows for rapid configuration and deployment without extensive, traditional coding.
Carl Moodley, CIO at GENRIC, articulates this foundational need: “We needed the ability and freedom to build our products in a manner that supported our unique structures, would be scalable, enable our ambition to automate workflows and integrate with multiple technologies, all while still ensuring that core functionality was predictable and stable.”
This statement encapsulates the essence of no-code product building. It empowers business users and product managers to design, test, and launch complex insurance products with minimal IT intervention. This significantly reduces development cycles and enhances agility. The approach empowers GENRIC to rapidly iterate and deploy new GENRIC insurance offerings efficiently.
We needed an insurtech partner that understood the absolute need for speed, simplicity and regulatory compliance.
Real-World Agility: The Pandemic Shield Case
The efficacy of this no-code product building approach and the resulting speed-to-market was dramatically demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. GENRIC swiftly identified a critical market gap and responded with the innovative Pandemic Shield.
This parametric product was designed to offer a lump-sum benefit to policyholders hospitalised due to COVID-19 or any other World Health Organisation-declared pandemic. It provided vital financial protection during an unprecedented global crisis.
The urgency of the situation demanded an exceptionally fast turnaround. Cornel Schoeman, COO at GENRIC, emphasised the paramount need for “speed, simplicity and regulatory compliance.” This challenge highlighted the platform’s capabilities.
The entire journey from the initial product concept to its live launch in the market was accomplished in an astonishing 50 days. Crucially, the technology rollout and development, built upon the flexible Genasys platform, consumed just 10 days of that timeline.
This extraordinary feat underscored Genasys’s capacity to facilitate rapid deployment. It stands as a testament to the power of streamlined development processes and flexible platforms that minimise the need for extensive coding. This allowed for unparalleled speed-to-market for a new GENRIC insurance product.
Maintaining a Competitive Edge
Beyond the sheer velocity of product deployment, this inherent agility, supported by no-code product building, provides GENRIC with a profound competitive advantage. Carl Moodley reiterates the impact on their market position.
“Being agile is what gives us the edge in the insurance marketplace. The driver for GENRIC’s growth was to be known as an insurer who is more agile and understanding than your traditional structures. We look for unique products and unique distribution channels. We need to be able to recognise opportunities and launch new products quickly.”
This means GENRIC can not only react to emerging market needs with speed-to-market. They can also proactively seek out and capitalise on novel opportunities. This enables them to develop tailor-made GENRIC insurance products that traditional insurers, burdened by legacy systems and slower processes, simply cannot.
The ability to “white-label one of our existing products for a new distribution channel, and within a week and a half to two weeks, we had the product in production, with a functional web-based onboarding journey and a mobile application for customers ready to take to market,” as highlighted in the article, illustrates the tangible benefits of their agile, no-code-driven operational model.
GENRIC Insurance‘s journey exemplifies how strategic partnerships and advanced technological capabilities, particularly those that embrace no-code product building principles, can fundamentally reshape an insurer’s operational dynamics. Their transformation from lengthy 12-month product cycles to a capability of launching new offerings in mere days is a powerful testament to their commitment to innovation and agility. By continually leveraging the speed-to-market advantage provided by their robust platform, GENRIC is not only meeting the evolving demands of niche markets, but also actively disrupting the traditional insurance landscape. This solidifies their position as a forward-thinking and responsive provider of specialised GENRIC insurance, ensuring their continued relevance and growth in a rapidly changing world.
