Takeaways:
- Insurers' customers need consistent answers to their questions
- Get a good handle on data to optimize customer experiences
- Transparency and aligned expectations help apply technology
Property and casualty insurers should take a data-centric approach to improving their customer service systems, according to insurance and financial services executives who spoke in an
AG2R La Mondiale, a Paris-based global insurance company, had to replicate its data repeatedly, causing customers to always get different answers to questions, according to Raphael Gusdorf, chief digital officer at the company.
"Aligning our data strategy and making sure that we have one data truth across the whole company is the starting point and the most challenging mission that we have ahead of us still," he said. "Data is everything in our insurance and in particular in our group. This is the foundational challenge that we are currently working on."
A data-led approach means looking at the movement of transactions and related payments, said Prashant Dinkar Hinge, chief information and transformation officer at MSIG USA. Those "will ultimately end up being either a document or money received by our end customer," he said.
"Understanding the internal processes, the data that is created during those processes and the communication between the systems, if you have a good handle on that, allows you to optimize and automate with the necessary controls and checks and balances in place," Hinge added.
P&C insurers are doing an "average" job at handing off transactions and payments from one unit to another, Hinge said. "A lot of companies struggle to string that all together and provide a seamless experience," he said. "Fragmentation of systems exacerbates the issue. The complexity of the architecture absolutely adds to that as well."
Insurers should either think about where payments fit in their core platforms or create an overlay for clients' financial interactions, according to Brian Dammeir, GM and head of payments and financial management at Plaid, a financial services data transfer network company.
"Making that decision very early on as a technology leader or as a leader in general insurance company is really important," he said. "Are you ripping and replacing the whole thing and payments is part of it? Or do you want to create something that's a part from the core platform that creates that really good experience? Both have pros and cons. It's all about being eyes wide open on the approach that you like as an organization."
Transparency and alignment of expectations can improve insurers' application of technology to customer experience, according to Hinge.
"We want to achieve better customer experience," he said. "At the same time, because of the complexity of the architecture and the consumer or the receiver, sometimes payments go to a broker, or sometimes the payments are going directly to an insured. There are different parties that are involved. It's not a straight line, and that's what adds to the time and budget spent in enhancing that experience."
The end result, Hinge added, "may not necessarily be fast, but it will still be a consumer friendly process, given the size of the payments and the interactions."
