Creating a more positive customer experience is high on the list of issues facing insurers as they focus on transforming their businesses with digital technologies. Much recent research has shown that customers are becoming increasingly demanding and expect insurers to provide the same levels of connectivity, speed of response and overall customer care that has been developed to a fine art by retailers such as Amazon.
Strategic Claims 2016
Claims is the main area where insurers can build a stronger service culture and strengthen their relationship with customers. This was underlined at The Insurance Network’s Strategic Claims 2016 conference at the beginning of March, where RDT sponsored one of the workshops.
Entitled Claims Service for 2020, the RDT workshop was chaired by RDT group product owner Michael Boucher. He opened the debate by stating that, despite persistent talk of disruption and the need to adopt digital strategies, the claims service in 2020 may well be ‘no different from how it is today’.
Mr Boucher told delegates: ‘Good intentions and a willingness to adapt are not enough, and if insurers are not seriously committed to building e-commerce systems and strategies today, the typical internal approval process of an insurer means that there isn’t enough time to achieve substantial changes over the next four years.
‘Insurers are still very much focused on price, particularly with the growth of aggregators. They need to shift their vision to claims and realise the value that a better service can make to customer retention and acquisition, and therefore their bottom line.’
He added: ‘RDT’s Equator product is a powerful underwriting tool, but there’s no reason why similar next generation technology can’t provide data enrichment and a better customer experience on the claims side, in the same way that RDT’s Skyline product is smoothing the way for first notification of loss.’
Shift happens…
It was a theme continued by Ibi Moghraby, the head of claims strategy and customer experience at Allianz Insurance. His presentation looked at the role of technology leaders such as Apple and Google, and market disrupters including Uber and InShared.
He opened with a video that highlighted the exponential growth of digital technology, and explained how the world is coming to be defined by digital business and the expectations of a growing population of internet natives – the consumers of today and tomorrow who expect sophisticated service levels, speedier response times, continuous connectivity, and a more personalised approach from their insurers. In other words, everything that they have grown to expect from the big and digitally savvy retail brands.