Anyone who has ever been part of a military family knows what it means to be on the move. The United Services Automobile Association (USAA), which provides insurance to some 7 million active and veteran military members and their families, recognizes this and developed its mobile strategy around it. The company's banking business led the way for this initiative, making major headlines in August 2009 when it introduced Deposit@Mobile service. At a time when many banks, and most insurers, weren't investing as heavily in mobile technology, privately held USAA recognized the nature of military life and sought solutions to address it. Banking analysts and consumers praised the innovation, calling it compelling and a "first" in the mobile banking market.
Whether it was the first or the greatest can be debated. However, what can't be debated is USAA's focus on leveraging innovative technology to service its customers. Between August 2009 and March 2011, 5 million checks were deposited via Deposit@Mobile, totaling $2.9 billion. And, 1.1 million members are enrolled in either Deposit@Home or Deposit@Mobile.
The remote mobile deposit technology, along with many of USAA's other mobile offerings in both the bank and insurance side, are a product of this.
"Our members-being military families and on the move-migrated quickly toward mobility devices [earlier] than the average consumer," says Wade Chance, AVP of the auto product management team at USAA. "Because of that, we migrated our solutions in that direction."
While USAA's mobile activity started in its banking business, its insurance side quickly learned a great deal through its subsidiary's success. "The banking experience has offered us an enormous amount of data and usage-based information from our members that is insightful for us on the insurance side," Chance says. "So it guided us and allowed us to sort of kick-start our mobile efforts."
Since that 2009 release, banks and insurers, including USAA, have been in a frenzy developing mobile sites and apps for their customers. "Mobile devices offer an enormous opportunity," Chance says. "The number of solutions and [applications] that could be created using a mobile device are endless."
Chance says that the biggest challenge with creating mobile solutions is sifting through all the possible offerings and matching those to USAA members' most compelling needs today and tomorrow, prioritizing those and allocating the right resources and talent to them. "I don't know that there's a magic formula to [dealing with that challenge]. It's probably more of the art of feedback and urgency, and some prediction of where we think our members' most dominant needs are going to be in the future."
P&C insurers are making mobility a priority, implementing mobile apps, according to Martina Conlon, a principal in the insurance practice of the New York research firm Novarica. Conlon told attendees at an executive conference held by the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS) in early April that nearly half the P&C executives surveyed by Novarica believe business conducted through smartphones and related devices was having a strong positive impact on their operations. Conlon noted that banks, airlines, hotels and other service providers are raising the bar for insurers. As a result, P&C insurers are held to providing more information and functionality on their mobile apps than they have previously provided online.
Another challenge is sifting through the flurry of devices to support. "We're seeing a proliferation of device types," Chad Hersh, principal with Novarica, told INN TV. "We have iPhone, iPad, Android phone, Nokia smartphones, Blackberries, Android tablets and Blackberry tablets. And, of course, there's Microsoft. With that kind of breadth of devices, you have to decide where there's going to be the biggest bang for the buck. You don't want to spread yourself too thin and try to support everything. You don't want to give up a really good experience in exchange for an adequate experience on a lot of platforms."
USAA's Chance recognizes this too, noting the insurer offers applications for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry. "It's definitely in an explosive state right now in terms of the number of devices that are being developed in the marketplace and the number of platforms on which those devices operate. We are guided by what our members needs are, and the devices that are most common to them."
To find out what its members need, USAA relies on ongoing formal and informal research conducted by both the banking and insurance sides. "We continually look for opportunities in interviews and panels that we host for our members to measure feedback in terms of the platforms that they choose to use. Ratings and reviews is another opportunity for us to measure," Chance says. "Being a direct company and having our members call us and contact us on a daily basis, we're able to gauge their feedback and their preferences. It gives us a great, real-time pulse on a number of things. Speaking for auto insurance specifically, the majority of our users are operating on the iPhone and Android platforms, with a number of different operating systems inside of those. If those shift over time, then certainly our priorities and decisions will shift as well."
Currently, whether through its mobile site, mobile.usaa.com, or via its mobile apps, USAA provides its members with the ability to get proof of auto insurance, pay bills, view payment details, get accident assistance, add a vehicle to an auto policy, update driver's license information and get a quote and receive issuance. "To quote and issue a policy through a member's mobile device with up to five vehicles on it is a pretty big break through for us," Chance says. "It's a rather complex environment. We have limited capabilities for claims reporting and the ability to review a claim for our members. Many of these items take time; they take resources and they take priority inside of other member needs as well."
One program that relies heavily on mobile apps is USAA's Auto Circle. The program is designed to help members with everything associated with purchasing a new car. While finding a used car using USAA Auto Circle is only available online, members can use the mobile app for iPhone and Android to evaluate cars and reviews from several major databases and then compare the price pre-negotiated by USAA to the prices people are actually paying. Members can then apply for a loan with USAA's bank and send the funds directly to the dealership through the iPhone. Lastly, members can get insurance quotes and update policies. "Over time we will continue building out capabilities in that program that will enable our members to do anything and everything related to their automobiles," Chance says. Anything that's involved in ownership of a vehicle from buying it to selling it from start to finish, will eventually be built out in this mobile app."
Just as with Auto Circle, USAA is not standing still in the mobile computing world. "Mobile technology is constantly changing, it's going to be different two months from now. It's an exciting time, not only for these devices, but for the opportunities that they bring to our members. The technology provides us with different ways to engage our members and enables more flexible transactions for them. The opportunities in this space in the future are endless."
The Source
Many of USAA's mobile offerings begin as ideas in its award-winning Innovation Communities for the Enterprise (ICE) platform initiative. The platform, which received second place in the Enterprise Systems category of INN's 2010 INNovators program, is built on a customized version of the Salesforce.com ideas community, and organized into several sub-communicties to support USAA's business model. It provides all employees an avenue to share innovative ideas.
All USAA employees can submit, view, vote and comment on ICE ideas. "We encourage commenting and collaborating because we all innovate in different ways," Janelle Dziuk, director, Enterprise Innovations, told INN TV. "Some people are good at being the original inventors and providing that original idea and others are good at expanding on another person's idea and making it better. We encourage that online collaboration, so we can take a good idea and make it a great idea."
The innovation team and executive staff track the information from their desktops and a variety of mobile technologies via dashboards. USAA also measures employee participation levels, the number of days that ideas are in the community prior to receiving a response, and ideas implemented.
One of the ICE ideas from its employees that recently became a reality was creation of a proprietary vehicle ranking system to help USAA members find the best vehicle. The insurer devised a scoring model-measuring costs, safety and reliability-to provide its members a list of "USAA Preferred" vehicles. USAA Preferred vehicles are those that rise to the top of the scoring model.
