Carl Strempel, CFO and co-founder, Imburse
Customer expectations are continuously evolving, with simplicity and speed a significant priority in the current market. These expectations have been driven primarily by well-executed technology advancements in eCommerce. For example, many eCommerce platforms allow for instant payment and transparent tracking and delivery. Customers also have the option of availing of a chatbot, allowing for problems and issues to be solved quicker than relying on telephone customer support.
The best examples of these customer engagement solutions are integrated across multiple channels so that customers can switch from the chat-bot to a phone call to an email seamlessly, with the context and conversation retained. Companies and providers understand that there is nothing more frustrating for customers than having to explain the issue multiple times to multiple service representatives.
Customer expectations are continuously changing as mobile technology continues to make advancements. The growing prevalence of super apps that can do it all, from booking food deliveries to ordering taxis, is massively impacting customer expectations. These enhanced offerings mean that individuals are now also expecting this level of detail and personalisation from banks and insurers. Whether buying personal insurance for yourself or your family, or a CFO or risk manager purchasing commercial insurance for a business, customer expectations are rising. There is no longer an excuse for insurers to deliver a poor customer experience.
Insurers, especially in the retail and SME business, have scrambled to overhaul their customer experiences to meet modern consumers’ demands. For example, if an insurance company cannot turn around a quote for a comparison website within a few seconds, they won’t win any business. In fact, if they are not in the top three quotes with a competitive price, they are most likely irrelevant.
As a result, insurers need to think about their technology stack and how they can deliver the best possible experiences for their customers, to generate sales and improve retention. In this case, real-time API integrations into comparison websites.
Other areas of innovation are the ongoing migration to the cloud, which allows for the building of scalability and resilience in insurance carriers, as well as enabling technologies such as document ingestion, workflow automation, A.I., and payments technology delivering a better customer experience with a reduced Total Cost of Ownership for the enterprise.
First and foremost, insurance companies need to understand their customers and how they expect insurance interactions to be delivered. Following this, a technology strategy must be formed to enable them to deliver in an agile way. Being agile is significant because customers’ expectations evolve over time, and technology also changes. As a result, insurers need to understand their customers and be able to deploy relevant technologies in an appropriate time frame to meet demands.
Many insurance providers partner with innovative technology companies to deliver solutions that will support the needs of the end customer. By offering relevant payment checkout experiences, similar to those by large eCommerce platforms, insurers can increase their top line and keep more customers satisfied. Insurers can further reduce payment site costs by using external partners to manage integrations with the global payment ecosystem. This makes the configuration of payments more cost-effective and quicker than what existing IT integrations allow for. This technology can deliver a 90 percent saving on payment integration and configuration.
The advantages of technology in the insurance industry are clear. Technology enables insurers to improve coverage for customers, enhance customer experience, reduce costs and improve product-market fit. There are several new insurance business models being deployed, including embedded insurance, parametric insurance, and soon “open insurance,” which are all designed to make the customer experience more seamless and provide the right cover at the right time. When deployed in the right way, technology is a critical enabler for insurers to deliver to their customers and avoid becoming irrelevant capacity providers.
There are numerous opportunities for insurers to embrace innovation in the industry. The challenges with enterprise payments, however, are primarily transforming traditional IT systems, and maintaining multiple IT integrations with different payment technologies and providers. The impact is not only on top-line income and bottom-line costs, but inadequate payment capability also inhibits insurance innovation. Payments need to meet the needs of the modern consumer and the insurance product. These are the barriers preventing insurers from pursuing their digital transformation journeys. It is for these reasons that third-party innovative solutions prove valuable, enabling insurers to completely optimise their payment systems, for a fraction of the cost, resources, and time.
