How to Prepare Your Insurance Company for a Connected Future

Although digital platforms are game-changers in the modern business environment, the insurance industry trails other sectors. While these ecosystems give adopters a competitive advantage over their industry competitors, only 36% of insurers derive revenue from insurance platforms.

A 2018 IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) Global C-suite Study revealed that insurance companies running business platforms reap many benefits. For instance, the report shows that insurers can achieve market valuations as high as eight times their revenues.

Below are crucial stats to know before seeing how you can achieve a successful digital transformation in your firm.

• About 85% of top insurance performers surveyed said digital platforms disrupt the industry.
• Another 74% of these insurers said they would be willing to offer products, services, and intellectual property using digital platforms.
• Despite these figures, only 46% of those companies said they were willing to set up digital ecosystems.

Indeed, digital transformation is a timely idea every insurer must embrace to survive. Unfortunately, many insurance companies lag other sectors in this transformation and still face numerous migration challenges.

Fortunately, these bottlenecks are surmountable if you answer some critical questions before making the big move. These questions are necessary because they offer a strategic direction and logically sound assumptions to avoid costly transitioning blunders.

• What are your primary goals and objectives for transitioning to a digital platform? For example, the goals and objectives could be an enhanced user experience, greater efficiency, or company growth.
• Which of your current resources can help you implement a digital ecosystem with the highest possible impact, greatest simplicity, and quickest satisfactory results?
• If you have a platform migration strategy, how do you intend to execute it?
• How does your migration to digital align with your overall business strategy?
• How will you distinguish your company in a platform-based economy and market?
• What unique capabilities do you have that can accelerate your industry differentiation?
• How have you prepared your current infrastructure for the digital platform and cloud-based operations?
• What types of strategic collaborations could assist you in expanding your platform horizon?

After asking and answering the above questions, your migration should be as easy as counting 1,2,3, and then boom!

Payments are critical pillars in how you interact with your clients. Providing policyholders with a convenient payment system saves you a bad reputation and the need to replace your core systems. Connecting your payment systems to a digital ecosystem smooths your interaction with policyholders. It also streamlines your claim settlement because they are make-or-break moments for every insurer.

Digitize your incoming and outgoing payments to give every policyholder a convenient experience whenever they contact you. Otherwise, this critical area could betray your entire efforts because you could lose customers if it’s not integrated smoothly with the rest of the customer experience.

Everything in life is environment-based, and this principle applies to your big move to a digital platform as well. You have to create a supportive corporate culture for this new tech-savvy migration to sustain it. Start by evaluating the overall technical acumen and capabilities that are resident in your staff. Respond appropriately by filling any gaps through the redefinition of existing roles or creating new ones.

Achieving the above requires you to bring fresh tech-savvy graduates into your system. Yes, young grads associate conventional insurance work with “old school” roles that under-exploit their tech-rich and savvy reserves. Fortunately, you can overcome this challenge by:

• Optimizing your website to underscore and showcase your digital transformation plans
• Revising your hiring policies to accommodate modern working options that attract the younger tech-savvy generation, for example, remote working
• Exploit reputable online job boards like Indeed and ZipRecruiter to get the best talent
• Make the most of career fairs

Don’t forget your current in-house employees, either. You can upgrade their tech skills and bring them to par with fresh tech-savvy graduates. Some ways of upgrading your workers’ skills are:

• Sending them to industry conferences and seminars
• Setting up online training for them with industry luminaries
• Allowing your IT employees sufficient room to update their skills
• Asking insurance digital solution providers to organize solution-specific training sessions with your staff
• Encouraging your employees to participate in refresher courses and trade certifications by reimbursing their tuition fees

These steps are critical because your efforts can rise or fall on your employees’ shoulders. Why? Because they will implement and oversee the digital platform.

Upgrade your online user experience because your new ecosystem should benefit different stakeholders. Make the experience memorable and enjoyable for your staff, prospects, customers, agents, and everyone. Take the following steps to connect all your systems to a digital platform:

• Establish a vibrant live chat
  Most American Millennials love online chats more than mobile calls, although they like smartphones. Ensure your system adequately answers all your users’ questions in real-time to avoid missing opportunities. Your live chat system needs to feature programmed answers to FAQs and sophisticated AI-powered chatbots.
• Add online forms
  Adding online forms is another giant leap towards a fully integrated digital ecosystem. Your platform should have payment, application, contact, and quotation forms.
• Electronic signatures
  Add a secure electronic signature system to upgrade your user experience. This step makes form-filling more convenient, so nobody needs to print forms for signing before submission.

Yes, you can embrace the connected future of insurance and connect all your systems to a single digital ecosystem in three simple steps. Go ahead and contact us today to help you enjoy a smooth transition.