There are three questions that insurance companies must find answers to if they want to innovate and position themselves for success in today’s rapidly changing and increasingly digital world. According to Marcello Regen, VP, brand innovation & chief customer officer at Allstate Canada, those questions are: What business are we in? How do we optimize the relationship with customers and partners to drive lifetime value? And, how do we fulfill our customers’ needs consistently?
Before attempting to transform anything, companies have to review and revisit the definition of what business they are in. Regen stressed: “It’s critical to avoid the temptation of responding based on what we do, and instead focus on what purpose we’re trying to achieve.” Does an insurance carrier or broker simply sell insurance? No, the industry does much more than that around customer service, advocacy, building resilience, driving innovation, and so on.
“Once you know the purpose you’re trying to achieve, that will define your North Star. It will point you to the critical capabilities, the competencies that you need to excel at, the ones you need to be competent in, and the ones you need to worry about,” said Regen during a fireside chat at the recent Reuters ‘Future of Insurance Canada’ conference. “Having clarity on what business you’re in will also open your eyes [to] opportunities in adjacent spaces that resonate and align with the needs of your target customers or prospects, rather than only aligning to your current operating model or your current systems. It will grant you the possibility to review and validate that you have what it takes to not only compete today, but also to pinpoint what your key priorities should be in this evolving business environment.”
After working out their “purpose,” insurance firms have to shift their strategy from product-centricity to customer-centricity, according to Regen. To achieve that, they need to better understand their target prospects and customers and make the most out of their data analytics strategies.
“Every company out there is at a very different stage on their data analytics journey,” Regen commented. “However, I will venture that much of the data collected is mainly related to fulfilling transactional needs - to rate, to underwrite, to settle claims - and it’s siloed within each of those functional areas. The call to action here is clear. We can no longer maintain customer data siloed across the different areas of the company if we want to have at least a chance of developing and enabling a multi- channel experience. Moreover, if we really want to provide a seamless and differentiated multi-channel experience, it’s imperative that we not only centralize the data, but we should also further augment it with online and offline sources. This will allow us to generate analytics and predictive models to more accurately reach, connect, rate and service customers.”
In order to fulfill customers’ needs consistently, insurers need more consistent processes, which are the result of a well-defined go to market strategy, powered by operational excellence and “nurtured with a culture of continuous improvement,” said Regen. He gave the example of how customer expectations have evolved regarding the insurance broker. Customers today want to be able to communicate with brokers across all channels - phone, online and video chat, and in person when possible.
“They not only expect brokers to provide insurance-specific expertise, but they expect a tailored approach when it comes to the products and services they purchase,” Regen said. “In essence, the role of agent is becoming much more of an advisory and a hub to fulfill multiple protection needs, which goes beyond the narrow approach of just selling insurance products. With consumers having access to so much information on their own, and with self service capabilities reducing friction for the transactional aspects of our business, the role of the agent/broker is moving upstream in the consumer journey.
“With so many options in the marketplace, agents need to differentiate themselves and earn trust first to then have the opportunity to provide advice to customers. And once the opportunity to provide advice is granted, the relationship is key, because the customer is willing to partner with the agent to get the most out of the services and products they buy. So, it is therefore critical for insurers to reimagine what aspects of the customer interaction will be centralized, and how we’ll be leveraging our distribution, and how we’ll be training our agents, brokers and service representatives to be competent.”
