• Tony Grosso, SVP of Global Marketing and Communications at EIS


• 02.06.2020 02:00 pm

Financial IT: Could you please tell us about EIS and your background?

Tony Grosso (TG): EIS Group is an insurtech company, which has been born and raised in Silicon Valley. We provide insurers around the world with a core and digital platform, which includes the core systems technology needed to process the likes of quoting, policy administration, claims, billing, and customer-facing applications. Our technology uses open APIs to rapidly create and deploy new and innovative products and services. This allows our customers to develop value-added services which are aligned and able to keep up with the needs of the consumer. It also allows us to support all of the different insurance lines of business. 

To give you a bit of background on myself, my name is Tony Grosso and I am the SVP of Global Marketing and Communications at the company. I have over 20 years of experience leading innovation, business development and product management in all life cycles from conception, development and deployment to growth and maintenance for insurance carriers, financial services and software companies. I have been in my current role for nearly six years, where I have worked on lots of different things from product management to enterprise sales, leading the company’s transformation into Group and Worksite insurance markets. 

Financial IT: In your opinion, how great is the impact of COVID-19 crisis on the insurance industry?

TG: It is clear that most industries have been impacted and insurance is no different. I think the insurance sector will feel the effects for many years to come. It has, however, highlighted the increasing need for insurers to continue or initiate digital transformation initiatives. 

The pandemic has driven a rapid immersion of the public at large in how to interact digitally and virtually,  this has significantly accelerated the need to digitise the insurance industry. The insurance industry is going to need to invest in its digital capabilities to align with consumer demand and to overcome the pressures involved with cost. 

Archaic legacy systems, infrastructure and outdated processes have made it difficult for insurance companies to react and address the increase in traffic with ease. The ability to offer customers resilient data access and efficient digital processes while keeping a workforce safe and maintaining customer support and service levels can be make or break for the insurer. Insurance businesses need to look for a fully digital, cloud-native platform which allows them to scale up capacity and business units as and when they are needed.

Financial IT: Recently EIS announced the launch in the UK. What experience EIS will bring to the local market?

TG: The UK is a very active market with London a leading center for insurtech and the prolific innovation that comes with it, particularly around insurance distribution, product innovation and customer experience.  It is second only to the Silicon Valley area and our home base of San Francisco where we have earned our stripes helping insurers in the US and elsewhere adopt the next-gen technologies. We are enabling them to take advantage of new insurtech and data, in all their forms, and build new ecosystems, and are committed to doing the same for UK insurers. 

You might ask why something new and different is needed? A fundamental shift from product-centric to customer-centric business models means many insurers have core systems that are no longer designed to meet customer and business needs in the new platform-based economy. Our coretech offering is a open platform - sporting one of the largest open API libraries in the market - that enables insurers to engage customers, how and when they want, within the ecosystems they spend time. 

UK insurers are telling us they need to innovate quickly and enter new ecosystems and are being hindered by their legacy systems. We have worked with many insurers globally to establish greenfield initiatives to give them rapid speed to market for new products and a platform that can then be leveraged across the enterprise. Where many new insurtech offerings are too immature to scale to enterprise needs, our coretech platform provides the necessary deep functionality and scalability and acts as a hub for new insurance ecosystems. 

Financial IT: What is next for EIS?

TG: We’re proud to have officially expanded our geographic footprint in both the UK and France, and to also be supporting implementations in Ireland and Spain. It is an interesting time to be joining the European insurance market. Heightened customer expectations driven by sectors beyond insurance, sophisticated new technologies and fierce competition are pushing the adoption of new business models and capabilities across every stage of the value chain. We’re passionate about helping our customers overcome these obstacles, through cloud-native, coretech platforms.