Article
How property and casualty and life insurance organizations board members can ask the questions that drive insights to “win”.
Jun 30, 2020 · Authored by John Romano
Insurance is built on trust with its customers and the initial reaction by many insurers as a result of the pandemic, COVID – 19, was to protect the trust of its customers and safety of its employees. Insurance organizations that include Property and Casualty (P&C) and Life & Health organizations have been in unique positions in their own verticals because of COVID-19. P&C organizations have been managing looming Business Interruption (BI) coverage regulations and mandates, while also supporting their customers with reduced premiums for auto insurance due to reduction in use and claims frequency. However, the rise in Directors & Officers (D&O) coverage premiums has been a current hot topic on the board agenda. Life insurance organizations are in various positions financially and operationally, and as a result the life insurers that had more digital capabilities, such as ease of online application acceptance and processing, use of automated underwriting, and ability to adapt to remote workforce have shown resilience in the past few months and are better situated for the recovery.
Over the past three months, many insurance organizations executives, boards and committee members have been asking questions and discussing the impact of COVID-19, addressing remote workforce capabilities, employee safety, responding to “what if” scenarios, discussing actuarial and reserve implications and discussing the road ahead. The time is now to focus on recovery, and given each insurance organization’s unique position in the market place as well as within each sector, it’s the type of questions that are being asked, or not being asked, that will drive or hinder insights.
If you are on a board of directors for P&C or Life insurance organizations, we have included questions below that can offer valuable discussion for strategy and the path forward.
Board member questions to drive insights
On agent and distribution effectiveness
- How have we shifted our investment in ensuring our agents can successfully operate and meet compliance requirements?
- How has the sales success rate shifted in our distribution model plans?
- What are we doing to support our less tenured agents who may be struggling with new relationship developments?
- How do we strengthen the connections with our customers?
- What are we doing to increase social media marketing and advertising?
- What needs to change in our distribution business model?
- What happens if we just stay the course and others change? Have we benchmarked our capabilities versus our competitors?
On customer convenience
- How do we plan to make the application process simpler and faster?
- What changes have we made to automated underwriting?
- How have we made the medical underwriting process more efficient?
- How has this situation changed our strategy on partnerships with Insurtechs to offer more digital and modern solutions?
- What type of virtual enhancements have we made to product illustrations?
- What enhancements are we making to speed up claims handling responsiveness
On workforce and operational efficiency
- What have we learned from our remote capabilities? Where can we make lasting cost efficient changes?
- How are we improving our use and impact of data analytics?
- Have we identified our most costly and manual processes and identified plans for incorporating or continued use of robotic process automation (RPA)?
- How has our internal control structure changed?
- What is the impact on our vendor risk management and cybersecurity programs and protocols?
- Is this a good time to start thinking about implementing new solutions for recruiting and Human Resources capabilities?
- What is our internal audit function doing to be more agile and provide better assurance and insights?
For more information on this topic, or to learn how Baker Tilly specialists can help, contact our team.
