While you may be well aware of the rise in fintech, have you ever heard about the new duo, insurance and technology? If we have to classify it, insuretech is a sector under the bigger umbrella fintech. To put it simply, it is the application of technology, created to solve one of the finance industry most problematic sectors: insurance. However, as problematic as it is, surprisingly, insuretech in the United Kingdom is thriving and contributes to over a quarter of the UK’s total net worth.
Obstacles the insurance industry has to overcome
The common problem in this industry is that insurance is lacking in customer engagement. You’ll rarely hear people praising how easy accessing insurance is, whether to claim or to apply for it, or even if one wants to ask a few questions regarding an insurance service offered. The lack of information makes people lack understanding towards this business, rendering them suspicious and fearful of being cheated.
Aside from that, the other challenge arises from the coming of the digital era itself. Insurance companies are aware that this will disrupt their business and whether it will become advantages or contribute to their downfall depends on their approach. A Survey done by PWC, a leading global professional services firm, says that 74% of respondents see that digitization is indeed a disruptive innovation to the insurance and finance industries.
With that, companies are already accepting the fact and ready to fulfill new objectives, such as improving their customer engagement via Artifical Intelligence (AI), increasing the accessibility to services right from the palms of the customers through the channels that customers prefer. InsureTech companies is starting to also create new systems on underwriting, claims, and integrating automation in their processes.
Benefits of using insuretech
What benefits can you reap if you apply technology in Insurance? There are many. One of them, for instance, can help to support services, which can provide customers with enhanced customer engagement. In this mobile life, you cannot expect people to attend appointments regularly, and everything has to be fast and precise. Thus, giving people the access to your insurance service through technology can amplify the convenience, increasing attraction to your company more.
With digitized insurance, you can also control customer claims better, making sure if the claim is as clear as it seems to be, i.e. in auto insurance, applying technology can enable you to check the case with incident detector (telematics-enabled first notice of loss) or distracted driving.
Also read: “What if Elon Musk Was Wrong about AI?“
The other benefit that you’ll gain is improving the retention of your customers. If you fulfill and focus on your customer’s needs. Insuretech can provide solutions to different segments and widen your market range. The application of technology is able to solve problems that the traditional business model could not. Such as providing 24 hour services, which is crucial for the time-sensitive Insurance industry. Not to mention that Insurance has stuck on its traditional business model for over a century. Failing to solve the rapid change on customers’ needs.
You can take the example of Cuvva, an auto insurance company from the UK. While the traditional model can only cover customers for a full year, this startup presents a refreshing light. Which allows its clients to insure themselves on a friend’s vehicle for a very short period of time. Let’s say an hour, only via mobile app. If that is not enough, you can look at cyene’s case, a Cyber Insurance Company from US. They tackled the digital challenge with brand new ideas and this has raised up their invesments to 40 million dollars within a year. Insuretech sounds really promising, isn’t it? Nevertheless, digitally underwritten insurance is predicted to grow up to $33 billion dollar by 2020 from four billion.
Omnichannel as the Means to Solve the Problem
To overcome the challenges, companies must spot room for improvement to get a better position in this industry. One critical issue is how to engage potential or existing customers via the channels they prefer. As customers that are already comfortable with platforms they are already familiar and comfortable with. They are often reluctant to change their apps just to communicate to one or two new contacts. A potential solution is via Omnichannel customer engagement.
Using the method of omnichannel, one is able to cross multiple channels to gain more experiences. In Insurance, a company can engage its customers in their preferred communication channels. Like Facebook Messenger, Line, or through the company’s website (via a chat widget, for example). Then you can ease the processes of responding to customers by centralising inbound chats onto a single platform. After that, you can also implement automated response bots to answer simple enquiries across different engagements channels. All is done in real-time, saving both customers and Insurance companies time and money.
Implementing omnichannel surely gives you another challenge yet leading you down the path to bigger profits. However, to do that, you must have a trusted partner who specializes in providing these engines. Qiscus can provide you with a capable team to tackle these obstacles. Feel free to contact us at www.qiscus.com or email [email protected] to get a free consultation for a start.
