The Future of Insurance Intermediation in the Age of the Digital Platform Economy

Lukas Stricker, Joël Wagner () and Angela Zeier Röschmann
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Lukas Stricker: Institute for Risk & Insurance, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Gertrudstrasse 8, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland
Joël Wagner: Department of Actuarial Science, Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne), University of Lausanne, Chamberonne—Extranef, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Angela Zeier Röschmann: Institute for Risk & Insurance, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Gertrudstrasse 8, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland

JRFM, 2023, vol. 16, issue 9, 1-32

Abstract: Today most insurance is sold by over a million brokers and independent agents acting as intermediaries between the insurance companies and their customers. Digitalization and changing customer behavior have fostered the development of insurtech businesses, and, more recently, multi-sided platforms are emerging as new market forms for insurance intermediation. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of how the emergence of the platform economy, with a market dominated by multi-sided platforms, will potentially impact insurance intermediation in the future. Using inductive content analysis on the results of a systematic literature review of the body of research on insurance intermediation, we identify the key functional roles fulfilled by insurance intermediaries. Applying these roles to a literature review on multi-sided platforms allows us to compare how different market forms and players embody the functional roles of intermediaries. Our findings suggest that multi-sided platforms are better able to perform certain roles in terms of agility, scale and scope, and we discuss the future role of platforms in insurance intermediation.

Keywords: insurance intermediation; multi-sided platforms; platform economy; systematic literature review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C E F2 F3 G (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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