This submit is a part of a sequence sponsored by AgentSync.
Throughout the insurance coverage distribution channel, everybody from the biggest carriers to particular person insurance coverage customers have witnessed a “digital transformation” to some extent previously three years. We’ve seen it by means of a rising variety of insurance coverage expertise corporations, an elevated funding in software program (each inside and buyer dealing with), and new developments in automating beforehand handbook components of the insurance coverage underwriting course of – simply to call a couple of examples.
COVID-19 hasn’t disappeared, however the world has began to resemble pre-pandemic occasions in some ways. Whereas some issues are returning to how they had been earlier than COVID, the technological leap ahead we see within the insurance coverage trade isn’t one thing that may revert, nor would we wish it to! Quite the opposite, it seems that COVID-19 helped the insurance coverage trade hit the gasoline pedal on modernizing work practices, buyer expertise, and operational effectivity.
As we strategy the three-year mark of when the world principally shut down, we needed to take a look at what sorts of adjustments COVID delivered to the insurance coverage trade, and in the event that they’re right here to remain.
The insurance coverage trade has been making an attempt to place its quaint, low-tech popularity behind it lengthy earlier than anybody heard the phrase “COVID-19.” Whether or not that’s through an ever-growing listing of insurtechs (backed by billions of dollars per year of enterprise capital), or by legacy insurers and brokers making an attempt to enchantment to a brand new technology (each of customers and employees), the dialog about modernizing insurance coverage isn’t a brand new one.
Regardless of decades-long efforts, and incremental enhancements, the insurance coverage trade in 2019 appeared surprisingly just like what it had 10 and even 20 years prior. Many insurers and insurance coverage businesses giant and small nonetheless required workers to work from centralized workplace places and relied on spreadsheets, shared community drives, in-person conferences, moist signatures, and exhausting copies to conduct enterprise. Then, a pandemic occurred and the world needed to modify actually in a single day. Organizations that had already invested in additional digital instruments had been forward of the curve, however finally, each insurance coverage group needed to change into extra fashionable to outlive.
Ask anybody who’s labored at an insurance coverage service, company, MGA or MGU, FMO, IMO, BGA, or some other insurance coverage enterprise: Most probably, they’ll inform you about working in an workplace and counting on handbook processes to get issues achieved. Day-to-day actions included telephone calls, in-person conferences, visiting shopper places, dinners and drinks with prospects and purchasers, and much and plenty of typing data into paperwork throughout a number of techniques.
Relying on the person group and its stage of digital sophistication, workers could have relied strictly on e mail for digital communications or they could have had skype or one other sort of prompt messaging. Many insurance coverage businesses had company administration techniques, however many additionally managed their enterprise utilizing spreadsheets and even paper paperwork.
Insurance coverage carriers earlier than COVID-19
Earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, insurance coverage carriers had been already utilizing quite a lot of applied sciences to automate and streamline their operations. It was 2019, not the stone ages, in any case! Examples of expertise insurance coverage carriers typically employed included software program to deal with coverage underwriting and claims processing, in addition to the usage of information analytics to higher perceive buyer wants and danger profiles.
Insurance coverage carriers had been additionally beginning to undertake newer applied sciences, resembling synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying (ML), to enhance their operations. The biggest and most tech-savvy insurance coverage carriers had been utilizing expertise to investigate giant quantities of information and establish patterns and developments that might assist them make higher knowledgeable selections about danger evaluation and coverage pricing. On the customer-facing facet, they had been additionally utilizing digital platforms and instruments to work together with clients and distribute their merchandise. This included the usage of on-line portals and cell apps to permit clients to buy insurance policies, make funds, and file claims.
Nonetheless, in a late 2020 interview with Brandon Carter, President of USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm, Carter reveals the extent to which USAA was entrenched in additional dated practices previous to the pandemic. For instance, Carter says that 90 % of the insurer’s then 35,000 workers labored out of an workplace location. And, as is frequent in life insurance coverage, all candidates wanted an in-person medical examination earlier than their insurance coverage may undergo underwriting. These are a few areas that might see a giant overhaul largely as a result of strain USAA felt from the impacts of COVID-19.
Insurance coverage businesses and brokerages earlier than COVID-19
In line with one company worker we spoke with, previous to COVID all 30 members of the company’s employees labored from the workplace full time and had desktop PCs. The company needed to develop however struggled to draw the very best expertise as a result of they had been restricted to hiring regionally, since they required in-office work. When it comes to operational tech, the company had Outlook for his or her e mail and Skype for interoffice prompt messaging. That they had an company administration system, however no different types of automation or expertise to talk of (automated producer compliance administration, for instance).
This story isn’t distinctive. From firsthand expertise, and from talking with producers and account managers at quite a lot of insurance coverage businesses, working from a central workplace location was typically non-negotiable earlier than March, 2020. Insurance coverage brokers carried out most of their enterprise in-person by touring to shopper places or internet hosting prospects and purchasers at their workplace. Thus, the quantity of expertise in place to facilitate actual time digital communication and collaboration between employees and purchasers was minimal.
In March of 2020, most U.S. workplaces shifted as many workers as doable to distant work. Solely important companies like hospitals, police departments, and grocery shops saved employees coming to their bodily working places. As important as our bodies in chairs had appeared to many insurance coverage trade professionals, the reality was that just about each member of the insurance coverage distribution channel may work simply as successfully from dwelling – with the suitable instruments to help.
Digitization at insurance coverage carriers in the course of the pandemic
In an interview from late 2020, Brandon Carter, President of USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm remarked that lower than 2 % of his workforce remained within the workplace, in comparison with 90 % earlier than COVID. He additionally mentioned that his workers had maintained their extraordinarily excessive ranges of buyer satisfaction all through 2020, proving that almost all of USAA’s insurance coverage workers may do their jobs from dwelling simply in addition to in an workplace.
On the identical time, COVID introduced alongside increased demand for private traces insurance coverage merchandise like life and medical insurance, based on a study published in the journal Procedia Computer Science by Dariusz Pauch and Anna Bera. The upper demand for these merchandise meant insurance coverage enterprise was booming and competitors between carriers to offer the very best buyer expertise – and the very best expertise to their downstream distribution companions – grew to become much more essential.
Different areas of digitization and modernization Carter spoke about implementing at USAA as a consequence of COVID-19 embody:
- Shifting extra sources to making a method to automate life insurance coverage underwriting utilizing individuals’s medical information and “large information” as a substitute of an in-person medical examination.
- cell apps like Uber and Amazon for tips on how to create a frictionless buyer expertise for individuals wanting to buy life insurance coverage.
- Taking a web page from consumer-favorite manufacturers’ books when it got here to re-engaging with clients after the preliminary buy (e.g. newsletters, surveys, reminders, outreach).
USAA is only one instance of what was occurring at insurance coverage carriers in the course of the top of the COVID-19 pandemic to rapidly shift to safer, socially-distanced, and digital operations. Conveniently, adopting these practices is what insurance coverage customers had been hoping for all alongside, which can have contributed to increased earnings (each in life, health, and P&C) within the yr following pandemic-induced digitization.
Digitization at insurance coverage businesses and brokerages in the course of the pandemic
Insurance coverage businesses weren’t utterly with out some fashionable expertise on the finish of 2019, however they had been largely office-based and should have used simply the fundamentals like e mail and inside prompt messaging. In line with an AgentSync buyer we spoke with, her company jumped into motion as quickly because the COVID lockdowns began and obtained laptops for each worker, the place most had been tied to desktop PCs beforehand.
With the entire company’s workers working from dwelling, management was shocked to see that nearly everybody thrived within the distant setting. It is a frequent story: Companies compelled to go distant by the virus had been shocked that productiveness, earnings, and shopper service didn’t endure.
Nonetheless, some individuals, together with this company’s leaders, missed the neighborhood of being collectively in individual. Round September 2020, they began having individuals are available in on designated days, for instance industrial traces employees on particular days and private traces employees on others. This compromise allowed these craving their outdated type of labor an opportunity to take action in a safer manner in the course of the pandemic. On the identical time, most individuals had been nonetheless working remotely the vast majority of the week. It was at this level that the company invested in new tech instruments like Office365, Microsoft Groups, and Zoom to allow continued collaboration and productiveness with its newly hybrid workforce.
One other growth that caught was the “COVID informal” gown code. The place this company’s workers had been required to put on enterprise informal gown whereas they labored within the workplace full time previous to COVID, management acknowledged that insurance coverage employees working at their desks may just do as effectively carrying no matter they had been snug in. Whereas not a technological enchancment, this modernization speaks to an total evolving tradition on the company.
The company additionally underwent a hiring increase in 2021 and 2022, thanks partially to its modernized tradition and the power to decide on expertise from anyplace within the U.S. As of early 2023, the company has created one other “sister company,” employed over 30 new workers (a lot of whom are completely distant), and continues to put money into expertise – like AgentSync – that creates extra time for employees to do their most dear work whereas expertise does the remaining.
It’s March, 2023 and life seems to be very totally different from three years in the past in nearly each manner possible. For some individuals, your complete COVID period has pale into the background, they usually dwell their lives as if nothing occurred. For others, incorporating COVID security protocols into their each day lives has change into the “new regular.”
For the insurance coverage trade, we’ve obtained our personal “new regular” and that features a stage of expertise utilization and digitization by no means earlier than seen. Like toothpaste that may’t be put again into the tube, insurance coverage professionals have seen a special manner of working that’s an enchancment over “the best way it’s all the time been achieved” for a lot of, they usually don’t wish to return.
The digital impression of COVID-19 at insurance coverage carriers three years later
In line with a 2021 insurance CEO outlook survey conducted by KPMG, 96 % of insurance coverage CEOs attribute their corporations accelerated uptake of digital working fashions to strain from the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the board, these insurance coverage digitization efforts seem to fall primarily into 4 areas.
Buyer expertise
Insurance coverage carriers largely notice that there’s no going again to the outdated days of customers simply taking what they may get. Folks searching for insurance coverage have so many selections at their fingertips and may typically use their cell phone to get prompt quotes from a number of insurers on-line.
Shoppers’ expectations didn’t simply change in 2020 however insurers’ response to them did. KPMG’s survey confirmed that 50 percent of insurance CEOs say the pandemic so dramatically accelerated their race to create a seamless digital client expertise that they’re now years forward of the place they anticipated to be earlier than COVID got here onto the scene.
At USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm, which has all the time prided itself on being a pacesetter in digitizing the shopper expertise based on president Brandon Carter, buyer expertise and buyer satisfaction are central to success. Within the years for the reason that pandemic began, USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm has continued to look to non-insurance apps for inspiration on making a optimistic digital expertise together with: digital channels for buyer interplay, digital instruments for outreach and re-engagement, and digital claims dealing with to make the expertise as seamless as doable.
Worker expertise
In an trade that faces a largely aging and retiring workforce, and a lack of sufficient new talent coming in to fill these roles, worker expertise is a serious alternative for insurers to leverage digitization to their benefit. And for the reason that begin of COVID-19, insurers have stepped as much as the problem. The USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm’s transformation from 90 % in-office to 98 % distant staff illustrates the entire 180 that many insurance coverage carriers have been by means of. Insurance coverage carriers have additionally put emphasis on worker expertise by investing extra in digital instruments that ease workers’ burdens and allow them to concentrate on the work they wish to be doing.
Automating repetitive duties
In line with Brandon Carter, President of USAA Life Insurance coverage Firm, essentially the most pure place for insurers to proceed evolving is within the automation of mundane processes. We occur to agree! For any insurer making an attempt to scale back prices and forestall worker turnover, getting software program to tackle repetitive and mundane duties as a substitute of individuals is a win/win. Sidenote: If considered one of these duties occurs to be manually monitoring and verifying producer license and appointment standing, AgentSync has some nice information for you.
Scaling determination making by means of synthetic intelligence (AI)
Synthetic intelligence is getting loads of consideration lately, and it’s exhausting to know what’s going to be impactful and what’s simply hype. For insurers, AI presents a really actual alternative to scale determination making that was as soon as solely doable by people.
For instance, insurers can dramatically velocity up underwriting and claims processing by taking data that’s traditionally been saved inside workers’ minds and creating determination frameworks that may settle for huge information inputs and output selections at a velocity thousands and thousands of occasions sooner than a human. If achieved effectively, scaling determination making by means of AI will liberate individuals to do extra high-impact work whereas concurrently pleasing clients with unprecedented velocity in coverage underwriting and claims cost.
The digital impression of COVID-19 at insurance coverage businesses and brokerages three years later
Most insurance coverage businesses don’t have the identical sort of sources at their disposal as an insurance coverage service. For them, the lasting impacts of digitization from COVID-19 appear to be largely in worker expertise and the best way they serve purchasers.
After all, worker expertise is under no circumstances unrelated to implementing expertise that makes everybody’s jobs simpler by automating repetitive duties, or just offering a contemporary expertise. Companies that had beforehand labored out of a single workplace location could have abruptly realized the advantages of a cloud-based software program for his or her company administration system when it by no means appeared mandatory earlier than. They could have additionally abruptly realized the magic of a Zoom account to maintain brokers and CSRs in touch with purchasers and inside companions.
For the company we spoke with, the impacts of their COVID-19 digital transformation are nonetheless obvious and ongoing. The workforce is nearly completely distant or hybrid with solely a few workers working from the workplace full time. After seeing the efficiencies introduced on by upgrading to extra fashionable communication options, the company started making use of this digital mindset to different components of the enterprise – ultimately implementing AgentSync to automate producer license compliance. Because the begin of COVID, the company has doubled its worker headcount and loved increased revenues as a result of workers are capable of work when and the way they work greatest, with the expertise to assist them do it.
Nobody will argue that COVID-19 was a “good factor” however it did present the motivation the insurance coverage trade wanted to embrace some lengthy overdue adjustments.
No matter the place you might be in your digital journey, AgentSync may help you simplify producer license compliance, service appointments, producer onboarding and offboarding, and extra. Get in touch with us today to learn the way.
