Overhauling customer engagement, processes, and digital strategy has been front of mind for most insurers throughout 2020, and, according to experts, the ones currently in the lead are those who were already investing into these sides of the business prior to COVID-19.
Andrew White, country manager for Australia and New Zealand at Signavio, says he has seen a significant uptick in interest from insurance companies when it comes to overhauling their processes, particularly from chief executives.
He says they are now looking to achieve efficiency and consistency across their businesses, many of which sell a range of different products under various subsidiaries, and are looking at partnering with insurtechs and platform providers with a lot more urgency.
“People, process and technology are the three things that run an organisation,” White explained.
“If you start with those fundamentals, it’s about how you get all your people across all your processes by using technology. That’s where we’re seeing a lot of interest from insurance companies – they want that 3D view of customer engagement.”
“A lot of staff are now working from home – many of our companies have ‘don’t come to the office’ policies, so it’ll be about how they can continue to share that single view,” he continued.
“Customer engagement and claims handling is the core of insurance, and regulation is a big driver too. Executives are now pushing their businesses to be more cost-effective and more consistent, and optimising processes is the key way of achieving that.
“Many insurers have subsidiaries, so it’s about how they can get consistency of experience across multiple subsidiaries selling different products.”
White says that although there was some talk around optimising processes prior to COVID, relatively little was actually getting done. He says the pandemic has certainly changed things, and has brought more attention to inefficiencies that may have been costing businesses in the long run.
“People talked about it before the pandemic, said ‘yes, that makes sense’ – but they didn’t necessarily do it,” he said.
“COVID-19 has definitely given that side of things a shake-up, particularly for the executives. They’re now saying “yes, we do need to be doing these things that we’ve been talking about for some time, and we need to do it quickly.”
“They have unfortunately lost a bit of time now,” White added. “All of the competition is doing it, so they need to be much more agile across their processes.”
Jason Roberts, strategy and innovation lead at Augen Software Group and chair of InsurTechNZ says insurers have made significant changes over the past year – particularly when it comes to interacting with customers. However, he says there is still a lot more room for insurer-insurtech partnerships in the market, as 2020 has been tough on small insurtech businesses looking to get deals through.
“Insurers have clearly made quite a few changes,” Roberts said.
“They made a rapid move to working from home, and they had to look after a bunch of customers, and think about how they would address customer experiences. They had to ensure their processes were efficient and provided value, particularly against the changed marketplace of COVID-19.”
“The insurers who addressed this prior to COVID are the ones leveraging the alignment in conversation – for example, when a customer calls into a contact centre, they might also have a chatbot running,” he explained.
“There’s an alignment of information there, which means they end up having a really good customer experience. But in terms of partnering and funding challenges, it’s fair to say that the market has definitely been impacted.”
Roberts noted that a recently released report showed that the 2018/19 year saw $7.3 billion in disclosed investment into the insurtech sector – a figure which has since dropped to $5 million. He says this has significantly impacted the ability of insurtechs to operate, which has affected both the insurtech market, and insurers themselves.
“That’s definitely had an impact on the ability for the insurtechs who need partnering and customer databases to get up and running,” Roberts said.
“We have seen delayed deals and failed businesses, and it’s really sad – but it does reflect some of the challenges in the marketplace.”
“Our hope is that the insurers will take away more of their conservative customer retention hats, and start working more with the insurtech community around innovation and the customer experience,” Roberts concluded.
