A study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions has shown that home insurers could be working to improve the customer experience through better use of data.
Out of the 1,500 homeowners who were asked, 68 per cent believed that when applying for insurance it is acceptable to leave out or manipulate information to keep premiums low.
Nearly two thirds (61 per cent) were worried that they might accidentally leave something out of their application, while 25 per cent said that claims should be covered even when the information originally provided was not entirely accurate.
Prefilling makes applications easier
The study found that 64 per cent of insurers agreed that automatically prefilling key property data in an application is of great value, while 85 per cent of consumers were in favour of this. Meanwhile 87 per cent said the application process would be improved if fewer questions were asked.
In addition, the study found that most respondents would be willing to share their property data to facilitate prefill and to speed up the application process.
Asking too many questions at the application stage can often lead to high drop-off rates, especially when customers find it difficult to answer certain questions. Jay Borkakoti of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, said: “Clearly, the more data that can be prefilled at the point of application, the fewer questions consumers need to answer, which improves their experience with buying home insurance.”
How RDT helps insurers and homeowners
Strengthening the validation process reduces misrepresentation and fraud, while also speeding up what is usually a lengthy questionnaire.
This is where RDT can make a big difference to speed, accuracy and overall customer engagement. In particular, through RDT’s Equator platform, homeowners and insurers can benefit from technology that increases depth and breadth of analysis, improves underwriting accuracy as well as providing a better customer experience.
Equator is a centralised rates and data orchestration platform that delivers sub-second pricing. It uses third-party data enrichment to augment details taken from the customer to return accurate quotes in real time. This saves the customer time while also providing the insurer with more information than they would get from a traditional questionnaire.
Equator is a versatile underlying technology with many insurance uses. A good example is Trice, a recently launched digital broker that enables customers to buy insurance using the Trice app on their phone. Trice uses Equator to provide swift data enrichment at point of quote, minimising customer input while maximising accuracy.
Jay Borkakoti says that given consumers’ aversion to filling out long forms, coupled with insurers’ quest for better data sources, there is a strong opportunity for those who can provide more “market-wide contributory data sets to help assess risk”.