Insurance has traditionally been built around paying customers after something goes wrong, sometimes taking months to complete. But as customer expectations evolve, bolttech is looking to move protection closer to the point of need, combining insurance with preventative services, assistance and recovery.
For Melissa Wong, Group Chief Product Officer at bolttech, the shift reflects a wider evolution in insurtech, from digitising traditional experiences towards more embedded and contextual services.
“Customers not only care about simplicity, personalisation, quick quotes and instant policy issuance, but they actually want to see insurance become contextual and relevant in their everyday lives,” Wong explained.
That change is influencing how bolttech thinks about protection. Rather than viewing insurance as something that only becomes relevant when a claim needs to be made, the company is exploring how it can help customers identify and prevent risks earlier, while still providing financial protection when something does go wrong.
Moving beyond financial indemnity
Wong believes customer expectations have now moved beyond simply making insurance easier to buy and manage.
“Customers’ expectations have gone way beyond just digitisation,” she said. “The expectation now is that you don’t just pay out when something bad happens. You’re able to actually help them become aware of issues more proactively and preventively.”
bolttech has been developing this approach across different areas of protection. In home insurance, for example, it has explored the use of IoT water sensors that can identify a leak and trigger an alert through an app. That alert can connect to assistance and recovery services, allowing the customer to respond rather than wait for damage to occur and make a claim.
The same thinking is being applied to cyber protection. Wong points to the risk of personal data being compromised as an area where customers increasingly want preventative support, rather than insurance alone, underscoring a broader shift highlighted in bolttech’s recent research, which unpacked how everyday behaviours, trust levels and rising scam exposure are shaping cyber risks across Asia Pacific.
“We take a holistic approach to online safety, combining preventative tools and support services with insurance protection for when things still go wrong,” she said. If a customer is compromised, an assistance trigger can connect them with a third-party hotline for further support.
For bolttech, this reflects a broader shift in what customers expect protection to provide. “It’s not just the protection anymore. It’s actually way more than that,” Wong said.
Making insurance more contextual
That broader proposition is also changing the way bolttech approaches embedded insurance. While insurance being available at the point of purchase or need has become increasingly common, Wong argues that simply embedding a product into another customer’s journey is no longer enough.
“The typical embedded insurance at the point of need is already hygiene,” she said. The opportunity now is to understand the wider customer journey and make protection relevant throughout it.
This means working with partners such as telcos, banks and retailers to understand how customers already interact with their services, rather than simply adding an insurance product at the end of the journey. bolttech can also provide white-labelled engagement platforms that sit within the partner’s existing digital environment, giving customers access to insurance, preventative services and assistance without leaving the partner’s app or website.
This approach can also extend beyond a single insurance policy. In financial services, for example, bolttech has explored packaging different levels of protection and assistance into banking subscriptions, with customers receiving different benefits depending on the account level they choose. The aim is to make protection part of a wider proposition rather than a separate product that customers have to seek out.
Designing protection around specific needs
For bolttech, making protection more relevant starts before a product reaches the customer. Wong says the company carries out customer research throughout its product development process, including surveys and qualitative research to understand where people feel exposed to risk and what concerns them in different markets.
That research is combined with the needs of the distribution partner and the capabilities of insurance carriers, creating a three-way process that brings together the requirements of the customer, partner and insurer. The approach is designed to avoid simply placing an existing insurance product onto a new distribution channel.
“We believe that creates a much stickier and better match to customers, and that you can actually differentiate,” she said. “You’re not offering the same one-size-fits-all product to everyone.”
Electric vehicles provide one example of where this can become important. Wong noted that traditional motor policies do not necessarily address the specific needs of EV owners, while customers can face higher premiums or more limited choices. bolttech is therefore working with insurance partners, like BYD, to develop coverages and pricing designed around the risks associated with EVs.
The same principle applies to emerging protection gaps, including cyber and climate-related risks. Wong describes cyber as “a massive protection gap”, while in climate-exposed markets the company is using data to model specific risks for particular audiences.
Florida provides one example. There, bolttech uses IoT data streams from water leak sensors and an AI-enabled mitigation platform to provide homeowners with proactive protection and help reduce costly water damage claims. By identifying potential leaks early and enabling action before significant damage occurs, the solution shifts insurance from simply paying for losses to helping prevent them in the first place.
More recently, bolttech has applied the same approach to wildfire exposure in California, looking at specific areas of need and how protection could be developed around them.
Partnerships across the value chain
As protection becomes broader and more specialised, Wong believes no single company can provide every part of the customer proposition. That makes partnerships increasingly important, both inside and outside the insurance industry.
“We definitely can’t own all of that ecosystem and we can’t build it all ourselves,” she said.
bolttech is therefore looking beyond traditional insurer relationships to work with companies that can provide specialist preventative, assistance and recovery services. In some cases, partners can bring distribution opportunities while insurance capabilities are added where they are missing, creating broader packages for customers.
Wong believes this kind of ecosystem approach can also help address one of the industry’s biggest sources of friction: differences in digital maturity between insurers and other businesses.
Some insurers remain cautious about opening their capabilities, while non-traditional distributors may lack the infrastructure or expertise needed to bring insurance products to market. Wong argues that greater openness could allow each participant to focus on what it does best.
The strongest partnerships, she added, are those where companies are willing to test ideas quickly and build on what they learn, rather than holding back over concerns about control.
AI could accelerate the next phase
AI is increasingly becoming part of that equation, particularly as bolttech looks at how to reduce the cost and complexity of building embedded insurance propositions.
Wong says some non-traditional distributors can identify new risks and customer needs but struggle to justify the infrastructure required to support insurance products. AI could help lower that barrier and allow more companies to participate. “I do genuinely believe that AI services will allow them to try a lot faster,” Wong said.
bolttech considers itself an AI-native company, applying AI across the insurance lifecycle, rather than limiting it to a single customer-facing use case. “We have applied AI multipliers across every aspect of the value chain,” Wong said, covering areas such as attachment and conversion, servicing, claims, renewal, retention and churn analysis.
Wong sees particular potential in product development, where AI can help bolttech move more quickly from identifying a customer need to developing and connecting the necessary product, systems and partners.
“What is exciting and quite dear to my heart, is the area of the product development cycle itself. In every aspect of the development lifecycle, we’re applying AI,” Wong said.
For bolttech, the next stage of insurance is therefore not simply about making existing products more digital. It is about changing when and how protection becomes part of people’s lives, bringing together preventative services, assistance, financial protection and wider ecosystems.
As Wong puts it, the opportunity is to analyse the full customer and insurance lifecycle and apply technology across it. “We’ve analysed every aspect of the value chain and the lifecycle, applying AI to it.”
That points towards a model where insurance remains an important part of the proposition, but is increasingly supported by technology, services and partnerships designed to help customers before, during and after something goes wrong.
Boleron was recently named in this year’s InsurTech100, which identifies the companies leading tech companies in the insurance sector. The full InsurTech100, including profiles on each company, can be found here.
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