However, the majority of end-customers don’t know or care about any of that. They’re getting too accustomed to one-click shopping, lifechat, live streaming and instant customer service to notice. And voices have begun to ask the question: ‘Why can’t I get the same seamless experience from my insurer or insurance agent?’

That’s not to say that digital transformation isn’t happening in the insurance sector – especially post-Covid-19. The will is unquestionably there. And even though our professional backgrounds are quite different, we both firmly believe that the industry has the potential to go from strength to strength in the coming decade. To that end, we’d like to share our three essential pieces of advice for all insurers and brokers in the future.

SHIFT TO THE CLOUD

Philip: You might think this is obvious, but we’re talking about much more than a lift and shift here. Once your data is in the cloud, you’re not only moving from CAPEX to OPEX and becoming more agile – you can do so much more with your data too. You can extend what you already have with information from third parties, and leverage AI to create valuable customer insights. You can differentiate your pricing. You can improve conversion and retention. You can even personalize an omni-channel customer conversation using Microsoft cloud capabilities, straight out of the box.

Once you’ve moved away from on-premises infrastructure, you’ll be free to experiment, fail fast and improve your business. You can reduce your time-to-market and outsmart your competition by implementing new products and services faster. You’ll be able to embrace innovations like AI, natural language understanding, object recognition, digital agents (bots) and Low Code/No Code application development. And with the Microsoft Azure cloud, you can leverage the online marketplace with ready-to-go insurance solutions.

Jeroen: With regards to risk modelling and financial decision making, we’ve worked with MetLife to migrate their data to our Azure cloud platform. And they’ve found they can do far more complex calculations and iterate faster than ever before. That’s giving them better insights and a clearer view of their risk position. That means they now outperform the market with attracting the good risks and leaving the bad risk to the competition.

Insurers like MetLife carry huge funds, and they need to make sure they’re using them in the most intelligent ways possible, of course. But in this period of extremely low interest rates, that’s becoming more and more difficult. Cloud technology enables insurers to start leveraging AI and machine learning to aid in that critical decision making, make shrewder and sustainable investments and stay ahead of the market.

RE-THINK YOUR ENTIRE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Philip: The industry is still wrestling with disparate and semi-automated processes, continuing manual paperwork, and emails perpetually going back and forth between insurers/ brokers and their customers. Quite simply, the answer is to re-think the entire customer journey from scratch.

Why bother digitalizing a paper form using OCR, if it’s still the same form, only on a screen? Think about creating a digital customer journey that is re-imagined from start-to-end. And then explore how that strategy could help you simplify your product portfolio and boost personalization.

Jeroen: This is about removing unnecessary steps using technology. For example, it is now possible to acquire data from all manner of sources and integrate it into your processes – do that and you’ll be able to reduce the number of questions you need to ask your customers before offering them a policy. I’ve seen some of our customers shift from asking people twenty questions to asking just three or four. Start using data more cleverly and you can do the same.

Another way to enhance the customer journey is to blend both human and automated communication. Some of our most impressive AI capabilities today are in the customer service space. That means lots of interaction can be handled by bots, with real agents jumping in and out as required.

Insurance is sometimes an emotional business, especially when people are making a claim. So it’s important to maintain that human understanding with customers – but digital technology can take away the repetitive tasks to free up human capacity to help the customers even better.

We’re also beginning to experiment with something called ‘sentiment analysis’, which can analyse how a person is feeling when they phone you with a question or complaint, and then advise your agents accordingly. Human interaction will become an important differentiator in future, and technology can help your business apply it even more effectively I.e. by making an automated transcription and summary of a customer conversation with next best actions.

THINK ABOUT YOUR ECOSYSTEM

Jeroen: Insurers don’t have to be constantly playing catchup. There’s plenty of scope to anticipate change, and get ahead of the game. And the way to do this is to think in terms of ecosystems. Take car insurance as an example: there are so many parties involved. There’s the car manufacturers, the repair shops, there’s traffic information, weather forecasts, the cars themselves, the drivers and even law enforcement. That’s your ecosystem. But instead of orchestrating your own ecosystem you can also participate in another eco-system I.e. by adding insurance to a retail basket while shopping online for a mobile phone.

Philip: Thinking about what your ecosystem means considering factors which may affect your business, and taking steps to prepare. Sticking with car insurance, the technology already exists for cars to call for help automatically when they’re in an accident. So you can easily imagine a world where the car also logs the damage, uploads pictures and even makes an assessment. The car might even book an appointment with a body shop and share it with the insurance company / broker without prompting. How might such innovations affect your pricing, customer service and claims handling?

You may even look at a post Covid-19 world, with increasing digitalization and more digital online insurers entering the market, and ask: ‘What is your position in the ecosystem and how to leverage cloud technology to differentate yourselves in the eyes of your end-customer?

These are pressing questions, and they begin by looking at your ecosystem.