The entire insurance industry is ramping up its investment in technology – however, one senior exec says firms must be particularly careful when it comes to the claims space.
“It’s incredibly important that technology investments are largely driven by improving the customer experience,” says Hilary Bates, chief claims and operations officer at Zurich Financial Services. “Investments need to be designed with that customer and employee experience front and centre.”
Bates’ comments come in the run up to the inaugural Claims Tech Summit, which is set to take place in Sydney later this year. There, she will be joined by a host of other industry professionals to discuss the major trends and risks of the rapidly evolving sector.
“Often tech investments will go hand in hand with some efficiency benefit, but if efficiency is your sole motivator and the benefits aren’t flowing to the customer in terms of improved speed, accuracy and experience, it is likely your investments won’t deliver on the customer experience in the short or long term,” Bates tells Insurance Business.
“With technology putting more power and choice in the hands of consumers, the stakes are higher than ever when it comes to getting technology investments right.”
For Zurich, this means approaching technology with one major question in mind – what technology experiences are customers having as retail consumers that they will soon come to expect from a commercial insurance provider?
“For example, most postal and courier companies let you track your deliveries online in real-time, so it makes sense that you should be able to track the progress of your insurance claim in the same way,” Bates tells Insurance Business.
To meet that expectation, Zurich rolled out a system dubbed Z-Track which lets customers track the progress of their claims, and opt-in to automatic email notifications. The firm is also in the process of investing in a new claims platform.
“By partnering with an experienced provider and ensuring the subject matter experts working in the project team are from the business, have a depth of knowledge and are keen to bring about change, the team is ensuring we simplify how we manage a claim to ensure the resulting customer experience is positive,” she says.
