Fadata is a Business Reporter client.
Through customer experience innovation, insurance reputation can improve, customer trust can be built, and a more stable future for the industry ensured
The success or failure of any insurance product is founded on the perception of its value. If insurance is perceived as a costly outgoing that rarely reaps any benefit, for example, customers will ask themselves, do I really need it?
This is evident in times of economic difficulty, as individuals are driven to cut out any purchases they feel are non-essential, and is a trend currently hitting the world of insurance.
Reputation can also hold the key to a positive attitude towards insurance. Unfortunately, Covid-related incidents and outdated payout systems in the midst of a tough economic climate have led to stressed claimants who may no longer see insurance firms as positively as they once did. To turn this around, insurers have a responsibility to build their reputation as an industry of care and value, not as an unnecessary expense.
Through innovative product offerings and improved purchasing journeys, insurers can help re-establish insurance as an unequivocal requirement. To do so, they must understand that the future of insurance is happening now, and address the changing expectations of customers by ensuring their business is relevant and compliant. This has become the main driving force behind all insurance-related tech investments.
Unlock the power of good customer relations
Meeting customer expectations and fulfilling their needs are one area where insurance technology developments can help. Insurers now have access to an abundance of tools to support them in improving their customer relationships, and they go beyond solving the obvious pain points. New ecosystems, open running environments and the use of AI and big data are helping insurers create value, deliver on personalisation and build trust by adopting a predict-to-protect methodology.
Improving the traditional value of insurance is paramount
The point of claim remains the truest juncture where insurers can provide their policyholders with positive engagement and experience, through efficient payouts. The key to improving the claims processes and legacy processes is to avoid throwing technology at old, outdated inefficient processes. They should instead rebuild the model, using technology to make claims as efficient and easy as possible for any customer, even those that require a human touch. Allow the journey to run smoothly, with ease of use, and you’ll deliver an efficient outcome.
Using AI and modern core technology can ensure paperwork can be dramatically reduced, letting you provide a seamless end-to-end process with the minimum of stress. Parametric insurance, for example, allows for claims to be paid automatically based upon whether certain trigger points are hit.
How else can value and trust be achieved?
Implementing user-friendly products and ecosystems can drastically change your customers’ perception of you as an insurer. By using data sets, insurers can add value to their offerings outside of the point of claim.
The insurer of the future understands their customer and provides coverage and services that meet their individual needs. Using big data from third parties and carriers’ own systems to improve underwriting processes, mitigate losses and enhance customer personalisation has already emerged as a new frontier for competitiveness. Data collected from wearable devices, for example, is helping life and health insurers make smarter underwriting decisions to the benefit of customers. While property and casualty carriers are leveraging sensors in homes, vehicles and buildings to proactively reduce losses in areas such as non-weather-related water damage.
Insurers can greatly increase their overall appeal and touchpoint to potential customers by providing a more convenient and often more cost-effective avenue for insurance shopping, by using open application programming interfaces (APIs) to create digitally enabled distribution channels with cross-industry partnerships, affinity channels and insurtech alliances. This gives insurers the flexibility to engage with a multiparty ecosystem, and seamlessly integrate insurance products and solutions into customers’ digital journeys. Banks, vehicle manufacturers and other partners are adding insurance products to their ecosystems to improve value propositions for customers.
Customer awareness will drive insurance evolution
Being aware of consumer behaviours and how consumers want to interact with insurers should be front and centre of how insurers distribute their products. Building trust adds value to an insurers’ offering – so, too, does delivering customer-centric products based on data. To achieve an insurance business for the future, implementing a new mindset and core technologies, such as INSIS by Fadata, to make the necessary and timely changes to react to customer demands, is imperative.
Care builds trust: it’s time to adapt to comply
Finally, to achieve complete trust and secure improved reputation in the insurance industry, insurers must address the principal concerns of customers and input the means to protect them. When we glimpse into the future of how consumers expect to be – and should be – served, fair play is of the utmost importance. Compliance plays a critical role here, the new Consumer Duty being a great example, but can also be a sore point for companies lacking in the technological ability to react to changes.
Traversing the changing insurance landscape is a reminder to insurers that digital transformation is no longer a plan for the future. In order to ensure that a business can comply and deliver on consumer expectations, it should have the ability to modify and to stay relevant now. To accomplish this, a good core platform is essential, enabling insurers to react and respond with speed, ease and minimal disruption, while supporting the potential to innovate far into the future.