The rating engine, long the preserve of actuaries, is becoming a strategic tool for a much wider group of insurance teams. Marketing, innovation and product functions are increasingly looking to pricing technology to launch offers faster, adapt campaigns and respond to changing customer expectations.
Earnix argues that this reflects a broader shift in how insurers view pricing. Rather than a technical process operating in isolation, pricing is becoming the point where profitability, risk appetite, customer experience and speed to market converge. The challenge is no longer simply calculating an accurate price, but turning that analysis into decisions that can be acted on consistently across the customer journey.
At one major European motor and affinity insurer, marketing and product teams have begun using the rating engine as a lever for their own objectives. The approach allows teams to adjust offers and respond to market conditions without treating pricing as something that sits entirely within actuarial or underwriting functions.
Personalisation is also moving further upstream. Insurers have traditionally focused personalisation on communications, such as targeted emails or digital journeys. But the more fundamental opportunity is to build it into the product itself, including cover, exclusions, limits, eligibility and underwriting terms.
Earnix points to research from Les Transformers de la relation clients, which described the insurer-customer relationship as often “silent” between policy inception and claim. Julie Berbesson, customer experience and excellence director at BPCE Assurances, called this the “paradox of silence”, with the challenge being “turning a relationship of necessity into one of perceived value”.
That changes the role of marketing. Instead of simply promoting products once they have been developed, marketing teams can become involved much earlier in deciding how offers are structured, positioned and brought to market. Pricing, product and customer strategy increasingly need to move together.
Explainability remains critical as those decisions become more automated. Earnix director Nicolas Rabot said, “zero effort does not mean less information or less understanding; it means less friction.”
Rabot also highlighted the tension insurers face between increasingly demanding customers and continued pressure on price. “Personalisation is no longer a competitive advantage; it is the standard. Policyholders now expect simplicity, immediacy and expertise all at once. Yet in a context of intense cost pressure, price is still their first consideration. That is the challenge: finding the right balance between price competitiveness and the quality of the relationship.”
The technology challenge is partly one of fragmentation. Insurers already have sophisticated CRM, underwriting and actuarial systems, but the teams using those systems do not always operate from the same information or objectives. That can make it harder to translate pricing insight into a coherent customer proposition.
This is also where the rating engine’s role starts to expand. Rather than functioning solely as a calculation layer, pricing infrastructure can connect profitability targets, market signals, underwriting rules and customer-facing decisions. Earnix’s work with Engage-It is intended to make product information, including cover and benefit details held across internal documents, more accessible and consistent at the point of customer interaction.
The implication is that pricing technology is becoming part of the wider decision-making infrastructure of an insurer. As AI capabilities are added to these systems, the value may come less from producing another model and more from connecting the models, data and business decisions already in place.
Earnix frames this as a move towards orchestration. Insurers may already have the technology needed to understand risk, customers and profitability, but the competitive advantage will increasingly depend on how effectively those capabilities are connected. For marketing, that could mean having a much earlier and more direct influence on the pricing decisions that ultimately shape the customer experience.
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