Are insurers still in the stone age when it comes to their claims services? Earlier this month, the claims process was found to be the area where UK’s insurers demonstrate
the least digital prowess, with just 4% of insurers surveyed offering claims services digitally.
Admittedly, due to its nature, it’s a far more complex area than others such as quote and buy, and is one that can require human interaction and oversight. But the industry is still lagging behind when it comes to making the process efficient and convenient, according to a company that provides claims services to insurers.
“It’s still very hard work from a customer’s point of view in making a claim. It seems as an industry we’ve been slow to adopt technology – if you look at finance and fintech and banking, they’re absolutely streets ahead,” said Neil Wilks, head of tech at Auger, a drainage and water claims specialist.
There are a handful of insurance companies that are revolutionising the way they approach claims, he said, pointing to
Aviva in the UK, and
Lemonade in the US, which is said to be looking at approving claims live via an app. But the overall picture is fairly bleak: “I don’t see anything that makes me think we’re particularly progressive as an industry when it comes to technology, which is disappointing,” Wilks commented.
Auger has been using technology to speed up the claims duration and improve customer satisfaction, offering clients an app that allows them to track their engineer, Uber-style, and has even been experimenting with virtual assistants that would see a claim synced to Amazon Echo or Google Assistant. Internally, automating a number of processes has meant that customers can now receive a report on their claim within hours of an engineer visiting.
“In the last few years we’ve halved our claims duration and the vast majority of that has been through technology,” Wilks said. “For us, one of our major drivers is claim duration. Reducing our average claim duration is one of our main targets, because everybody benefits from it. A better customer journey is better for the client, and better for us because the claim is turned around quickly, so resources are freed up.”
For the insurers Auger works with, the benefit goes beyond improved customer satisfaction. “One of the biggest drivers for insurers is data and having visibility of the data,” Wilks said. “[Insurers’] ability to produce data and management information over their claims is somewhat limited… By doing everything digitally and electronically, it enables us to provide huge amounts of data and analyse it and then give it to them.”
As an industry though, there’s still a way to go. “With an insurance claim, I’m held to a phone generally.
There’s still a huge reliance on making a phone call,” Wilks said. “People today don’t really want to speak to people. They want self-service, they want to be self-reliant, they want to go onto a website or go onto an app, log in and access all of the information that they want.
“I don’t think personally that we are doing enough.”
Related stories:
Which insurers topped this digital ranking?
Are insurtechs revolutionising the insurance claims process?
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