Working with a major European financial services company, Arca Blanca was tasked with leading the design of a revolutionary new insurance platform and creating a best-in-class customer journey in one of the client’s core markets.

Platform businesses have dominated the headlines over the past decade, breathing new life into unfashionable industries and serving those previously underdeveloped.

The high-profile success stories of a few large platform-based companies are ubiquitous but in reality, they are more than matched by the struggles of those that did not survive. For every Uber there is a Sidecar, for every Spotify there is a Rdio.

Creating a platform-model for a historically linear business is even more complex, far less desirable and often unfeasible.

The idea of self-disruption tends not to appeal. Nevertheless, it is often prudent as if you do not, someone else will.

Delivering for the customer

Even though the client was generating more than €10bn premiums in almost 20 countries, the rapid rise of customer-centric insurance tech companies posed a significant threat to its core markets.

Aware that they had to change quickly and driven by a desire to show progress, they embarked on a process of identifying acquisition targets before firming up a strategic direction.

Arca Blanca identified the very real risks this approach could bring, potentially creating a patchwork of disjointed capabilities and inheriting legacy technological debt, inhibiting their ability to integrate a new company and losing credibility in the market pre-launch.

The situation provided the perfect opportunity for the client to create a disruptive platform of their own, generating value for all participants.

Disrupting the disruptors

With the model so difficult to conquer, Arca Blanca developed a blueprint for creating a resilient ecosystem-based platform.

Benchmarking the client’s thinking against leading-edge platforms, Arca Blanca challenged them to explore opportunities to engage with partners from its wider value chain.

This meant the client was able to disrupt the disruptors, leveraging their scale to create strategic partnerships and to deliver a superior, hard-to-replicate proposition and experience for customers.

The result was the creation of a roadmap towards the ultimate platform business, including the development of intelligent case management tools, behaviour prediction and an array of dashboards and insights.

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About Arca Blanca

Arca Blanca is an integrated consulting and data company, resolving complex growth and profitability challenges. We help businesses of all types thrive in the face of unprecedented change and upheaval driven by new technologies.