Shanna Barlow, director of the digital and technology product team at The General, spoke with Digital Insurance about how the insurer approaches innovation and implementing tech-related initiatives.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
How does the General approach innovation?
We use our test and learn mentality and incrementality in what we do. It's really about understanding what our customers want, through voice of customer metrics, through data analytics, and designing experiences that we can put in play as a test and learn. So it's about understanding what we're putting in, seeing how these experiences win in the market, and then moving forward, or adapting from what we've learned in that space. It's a continuous evolution in that space. We do try to take, like a design thinking approach, that human-centered approach, what I was talking about with voice of the customer metrics, talking about our data analytics and our journey to understand where pain points might exist and overcoming those pain points, but always with a customer centric lens. So we want to put the customer first in everything that we do. So it's really leaning into that and just incrementally learning and adapting as we go on.
What does it look like to keep pace with customer expectations?
Understanding how to utilize the technologies that are out there, and how do we plug into those intelligently. How do we win with those in the insurance business, where it can be a little bit rigid is really where you're going to find the sweet spot. Let's test it in a smaller market. Let's see how it pans out. If it does really well, then we scale it. If it doesn't, then we dial back. We figure out, how can we implement better? How can we do it differently to gain more adoption or increase engagement and then scale. It's about doing it in small increments, that really lives in our brand and where we want to go from a customer service perspective.
Meeting them in the channel too, that they want. So we can and we know that many people do most things through their mobile devices. So how do we present experiences in mobile where it makes a meaningful difference? Also, that's not everybody, though, so meeting them where they want to be in the digital landscape is really, really important. Listening to what they say and where they're coming from, the feedback that they're providing, looking at our data to understand the challenges and really trying to just provide them solutions where they need it and where they want it.
From my perspective, I don't know that it's super difficult. It's more challenging when you're plugging in new technologies, and how do you utilize them to the best of their abilities. How do we service the customer the best with what we see as trending tech, but understanding where our customers have challenges and how do we solve for those needs?
If you're looking at the data repeatedly, and you're looking at the voice of consumer feedback repeatedly, those gaps in those areas are where there is a need to become a little bit more obvious. It's how we plug into those and how we solve those that then becomes a little bit more challenging. So would I say there's a challenge there? Yes, but I think we're doing a pretty good job at understanding what they want and where they want to be and trying to meet those needs.
How have emerging technologies impacted back-end operations?
Emerging technologies play a role in just every aspect.
You have things like AI, from the General's perspective, we've been able to utilize a new program called My Drive, which is our usage-based insurance program. It's how you plug into those different technologies and how you use them to cover those customer needs. So it does play a role, but UBI has been very successful in how we utilize that data. We've seen really great adoption. We see a lot of traffic in that area, but it's the data on the back end that we're able to get with usage-based insurance that will help us create more value for the customer in the long run. So how do we use the driving trends in the data that we do receive to really branch out and create more features and more opportunity for our customers in that space?
I think that again, incrementality comes into play. So by signing up for My Drive, we do have access to more information than we would have previously. And I think there is a fine line in the industry about what customers are willing to give up to you from a data perspective, and what they're comfortable with. But as time has progressed in my career, the comfort level of how much information customers feel we can use is growing. So as we get more comfortable in the digital world, there are expectations that we're using their data to make things easier for them. So I think you just have to find that balance, that fine line of trust and commitment with the user, and really provide meaningful value for the data that they're providing, so that their comfort level is high enough to continue to go that route.
Can you share about the recent acquisition by Sentry Insurance?
Can you share any tech-related initiatives?
From a tech perspective, we're really excited, because we've got a lot of things on the horizon. Most notably, My Drive, we're in two states now, and we're running it like a proof of concept (POC), so that we can get those learnings and understand how they're adopting and then we're going to scale that up. So, more to come from UBI in more states, in 2025 and even into 2026, we're really excited for that, because we've seen that it's winning right now.
Some other things that we have on the horizon as well with mobile app policy changes. So really listening to the customer, they are able to make policy changes on the desktop version, but we know most people use the app, so allowing that capability in that space has been a real winner, and we did that as a proof of concept as well, to understand, do they truly want it? They say they do. But sometimes what we hear doesn't always come to fruition in the data, so it's really balancing the two. That's been another one that will scale up and will continue to provide [opportunities] in that space, and some claims submission stuff. So allowing first party and third-party claim submissions to really streamline the process for the customer, allowing us to allow multiple people to submit those claims when and where they want to. We'll continue to grow in that space as well.
Anything else you would like to share?
I think you know to reiterate like key statements, the way we tackle innovation is incrementality. We're big on the test and learn, adapting to our market. I think those are core competencies that we're really good at here, at The General. Also, pivoting and delivering features to our customers that they not only want, but they use. And making it simple, right? Insurance is a really hard product to sell digitally to make sure everyone understands it, our goal is to simplify and make it so that it's accessible and easy to understand for everybody. So really, that's kind of where we're trying to live in those core values, and then to add Sentry Insurance's expertise and some of their technologies and some of our expertise into one bucket, I think we're shaping up to have a really incredible future here.
