Insurers Vs Insurtech: Can Carriers and Producers Retain the Bigger Slice of Pie?
The rise of Insurtechs dramatically changed the market landscape. Fintech companies leveraged the ability to innovate and disrupt the banking industry by offering convenience and speed to customers at a fraction of the cost. Incumbents that were open to adopting digital technologies saw it as an opportunity to partner with them and offered customers a new way of banking—one that combines the expertise of traditional banking institutions with the speed of innovation and convenience of new-age startups.
The insurance industry is seeing a similar shift. Carriers and Producers must adopt a forward-looking approach to appeal to a changing customer profile, battle new competition and attract and retain the best talent in the market to retain their dominant positions in the market.
Here are three areas where technology will play a key role in strengthening business operations and building a scalable strategy to retain and grow their share of the revenue.
Simplify Day-To-Day Activities For Your Agents
Multiple studies and surveys show that an agent spends less than 30% of their time with customers, understanding their needs and selling the right products. A majority of their time is spent toggling through multiple apps throughout their day: email, call, CRM, scheduler and so on. This means that a significant chunk of their time is spent on administrative tasks, leading to decreased productivity and missed sales opportunities. It is a significant challenge for businesses looking to maximize their sales teams' effectiveness and achieve their revenue goals.
Insurers should collaborate with insurtechs and SaaS for specialized solutions that can unify the seller journey. From identifying a new lead to engaging them, updating managers on their progress, to being able to close a sale—it is a major productivity boost for frontline teams if they have a single interface to manage the customer buying journey.
Your salespeople are on-ground away from their desks, meeting prospects and customers. So make sure your platform providers have mobile-first capabilities.
Become The Employer-Of-Choice By Adopting The Right Tech
One of the biggest challenges insurers are facing is attrition and the challenge of attracting new talent. And with millennials and Gen Zs dominating the working population, what is it that attracts them to a career? Foosball tables, yoga bars and meditation sessions simply don’t cut it anymore.
For one, they are digital natives—apps like Netflix, Uber and Amazon are part of their lifestyle. It is a no-brainer that they expect the same kind of experience at the workplace too.
An insurer that provides strong technology leverage for their talent is better placed than the others. Easy-to-use applications with modern interfaces that can elevate their experience on the job can differentiate insurers as employers of choice. Insurance as an industry must seek cutting-edge tools with AI and ML capabilities and analytics to enable their workforce to be productive and cross-functionally collaborative and build their careers in the long run.
Bridge The Gap Between Distribution Channels To Offer Omnichannel Experiences
What are the priorities for different distribution channels in insurance?
The direct sales insurance team could be seeking solutions for campaign management. Your agency network maybe is trying to automate activity capture for their field agents. The bancassurance channel may be working towards plugging lead leakages. But are they sharing best practices with each other?
The dynamics of insurance distribution across various channels may be different. Typically, each distribution channel runs in silos. But as carriers set out to digitize these various channel processes or address problems specific to them, it becomes a best practice to leverage technology to bridge this gap.
While omnichannel experience has been a buzzword in the industry for some time, no carrier or producer has truly mastered the art of delivering it. A unified digital platform can enable insurance companies to offer customers a seamless experience across all channels, from online to in person. To offer an omnichannel experience to customers, you need to capture and track customer interactions with your agents, website and other sources of interactions.
Carriers need to view enterprise-wide sales as a whole and identify gaps and areas for improvement. And then seek an enterprise-wide solution to address this. There will be an overall improvement in productivity and performance. It is an exciting phase for traditional insurance players.
While the threat of new competition looms large, it is an opportunity in disguise to deeply understand customer profiles, innovate the product portfolio and rewire with the right tools by collaborating with the right solution providers. Companies that embrace these partnerships are likely to enjoy greater competitiveness, innovation and long-term growth in the coming generations.
