The Top Two Digital Opportunities For Insurers

Digital technologies are changing the insurance landscape and creating opportunities for innovative players to grow their market share and even transform their business altogether.

At CA we believe the top two digital opportunities for insurers today are:

• [in the short run] offering digital self-service through the entire policy lifecycle
• [in the long run] transforming customer relationships and becoming a trusted advisor

These two opportunities are described in further detail in the following sections.

Insurers currently lag behind other sectors such as banking and retail when it comes to offering great digital customer experiences. Recent research by Altus Consulting shows that whilst 87% of the 18 leading UK insurers have digital capabilities at the “quote and buy” stage of the policy lifecycle, there is a sharp drop in digital self-service capabilities further down the lifecycle:

• Only 39% of UK insurers let customers make mid-term adjustments digitally
• Only 19% let customers renew their policy online
• Only 6% let customers file a claim digitally

Digital technologies are changing the insurance landscape and creating opportunities for innovative players to grow their market share and even transform their business altogether.

At CA we believe the top two digital opportunities for insurers today are:

• [in the short run] offering digital self-service through the entire policy lifecycle
• [in the long run] transforming customer relationships and becoming a trusted advisor

These two opportunities are described in further detail in the following sections.

The real long term opportunity for insurers is to transform the very nature of their customer relationships and the key to achieving this transformation is data.

Highly relevant and valuable data is generated by consumers’ mobile phones, wearables (e.g. Fitbit) and a whole host of new connected devices being introduced in the ‘Internet of Things’ market (connected homes, connected cars, etc…)

This represents a great opportunity if you can convince your customers to give you access to their private data in exchange for valuable new advisory services such as helping them identify, assess and mitigate health, property and lifestyle risks as well as gain protection tailored to their individual needs.

But to do so your customers must feel cared for individually and with true empathy and they have to trust that you will continue to keep things fresh by evolving your services. Customers should also be incentivised and trust that when they change their behaviour and improve their risk profile they will benefit from cheaper insurance premiums.

If you can’t convince them, there are suitors lining up around the block who will sweep them off their feet. That’s a tough challenge as it’s hard to change arm-length relationships into closer relationships. It’s also hard to act nimbly when, at this age, you’re anything but.

Working with a technology partner can be beneficial for a number of reasons:

• it lets you focus on what you do best
• it reduces technology risk
• it is often cheaper and faster than doing it yourself

IT outsourcing is already common practice in the insurance industry – here are a couple of examples:

• RSA Insurance Group plc, the British multinational general insurance company, extended its outsourcing agreement with Accenture in February 2016 in a six-year deal. Accenture will provide IT-enabled services in the back office, for customer services, claims processing, policy management
• Direct Line Group, the insurance company which separated from the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2012, awarded Capgemini a five-year deal in 2013 to build and manage its new IT infrastructure

However, traditional outsourcing deals like the ones above typically focus on generating cost savings and do not help you stay ahead of the curve nor address new market opportunities.