The holistic shift to customers expecting a seamless digital experience accelerates the need for digital transformation. The rapidly advancing technology landscape gives rise to new and ever more convenient services that dramatically improve the customer experience and overall business processes in such a way that, if unaddressed, will heavily impact legacy insurers. This new paradigm is predominantly enabled by advances in intelligent automation, AI, IoT connected devices, and advanced analytics, with benefits across the entirety of the value chain. To better understand the current “digital state” of the industry, we will take you on a journey into how these innovations are impacting current business processes and leave you with an understanding of how you can evolve to utilize all the benefits that come with advancing your digital maturity.
New products and features
As a result of aggregating internal and external sources of consumer data, new products and features have recently been launched into the insurance marketplace. An example of this is micro-insurance, a product that allows single assets not typically covered by legacy insurers to be covered for specific time periods, saving customers money by allowing them to turn off coverage when their assets are not used for commercial business.
Similarly, usage-based offerings allow for dynamic premiums which fluctuate based on how often the insured asset is used, again saving the customer money and improving their experience. These are just two examples of how big data is leading to the creation of innovative products that meet the ever evolving needs of the customer.
Digital distribution and effective channel partners
While product offerings are a key area impacted by this digital revolution, sales channels are rapidly evolving also, as digitization is accelerating the adoption of online and mobile app-based channels, meeting the needs of millennial buying preferences. Research, purchase, and management of insurance products in a single application and seamlessly execute with accuracy, speed and quality.
These digital distribution and self-service channels, enabled through advances in cloud-based technologies and twinned with the high penetration of smartphones, are leading to increased customer satisfaction, and perhaps more importantly, retention.
Accelerated underwriting and personalized pricing
Automation has removed the human processing element of certain activities and is freeing up time to focus on more value-added work, while consequently improving the customer experience.
In addition to benefits such as improved underwriting, insurance policies are now being priced, purchased and bound in near real time, transforming the entirety of the internal process through intelligent automation. Not only are these policies being priced in real time, but they are leveraging new sources of internal and external consumer data to personalize policies.
