With the fight for new customers growing more and more competitive, insurers continue to look for new ways of differentiation through their products. Insurance carriers have always needed to develop innovative products, get them to market in a timely fashion, and manage risk. Those are key ingredients to build market share and maintaining profitability.

But creating new products is only part of product differentiation. Keeping products profitable and up-to-date is an ongoing challenge as the market changes daily with new regulations, competitor advances, and shifting customer expectations. Insurers are moving toward a more data-driven world, including in product management. While tools exist to streamline the modifications of rates and rules, much of a product manager’s job is trying to understand which levers to use to improve the penetration and profitability of their products. How much of an impact will a rate change make? Should you expand your appetite, and if so, what underwriting rules should apply? What will the competitive and market impact be when making a change to a form? Are your most profitable segments getting the best rates?

This report looks at some of the challenges that carriers have when thinking through these questions and will look at some of the new tools and techniques that carriers use to address these issues.