Customer service

New methods, using artificial intelligence, ease the fraud detection burden and help insurance companies stay one step ahead.

Digital Insurance spoke with Rand Harbert, chief agency, sales and marketing officer for State Farm about celebrating 100 years and its support of small businesses.

New research from SMA shows that the plans and progress of some transformational technologies are accelerating ahead as others have hit the brakes.

In 2021, only about 40% of claimants interacted with a claim estimator via digital channels and 47% made a claim using a website.

Ecosystems, sustainability and workforce transformation were the main topics of the EY 2022 Global Insurance Outlook, which comes out in January 2022. It’s important to understand how digital transformation is uniquely related to each of those topics.

Forty-six percent of consumers are open to pay-per-mile and 45% are interested in a program that rewards safe driving with discounts, according to a Nationwide survey. Yet only 45% of agents offer telematics to a quarter or fewer of customers.

Only 32% of 2,750 U.S. consumers surveyed by the company in fall 2021 had been offered telematics-based insurance, the company said. Of those that were offered, 49% took the offer, and 64% have stuck with it.

The transformation of consumer-focused technologies is forcing providers to adopt new tools to keep up. However, many of these tools are not built with user-friendly experiences that meet customer expectations, and therefore, they suffer from low engagement and adoption.

There are many important legal issues to consider when operating in the heavily regulated and ever-changing insurance ecosystem. Discussed are some of the key issues to consider when contracting, to demonstrate what is truly important and where insurtechs should focus, whether it concerns program administrator agreements or other types of partnership, master services, or marketing agreements.

Five strategies that insurers can use to cut friction from the customer journey as they work towards digitally transforming their business.

A crucial point that many businesses engaged in the B2B sharing economy are increasingly aware of is that engagement often carries considerable liability risk, which is why it is of utmost importance for businesses to insure against this risk with robust verification services.

Insurance blockchain working group The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative has partnered with Trustlayer to build out an insurance verification proof of concept.

“A New Idea: Insurers Creating Ecosystems Delivering Value to The Policyholders,” a session during InsureTech Connect 2021 focused on the current changes occurring to accelerate solutions for consumers.

Vethelpline offers insurance members and now subscribers, 24/7 access to veterinary experts and veterinarians who can answer care questions through an app with a chat feature or through a phone consultation.

Recent EY research confirms how the pandemic fundamentally changed consumer needs, how they plan to increase their financial security, and what insurers can do to seize the opportunity.

The past 18 months have uncovered a vulnerability in the insurance industry, as companies have struggled to maintain consistency in their processes in the face of remote working. Communication processes, in particular, have suffered and as a result, traditional insurers now face the real risk of losing customers to insurtechs and other more technologically advanced companies.

Insurtechs have secured more access to capital in the last few years and by the end of 2020 the total market cap of listed insurtechs surpassed $22 billion, according to the World Insurtech Report 2021.

Forrester research finds that even the most tech-savvy claimants want the reassurance of a human voice handling their claim.

Many insurers are focused on ransomware risk protection even though other new vulnerabilities are emerging from remote work. Recent statistics point to a troubling increase in ransomware and phishing, web application attacks and other emerging cybercrime tactics.

Carriers, pressed by lower expense insurtech models that emphasize direct-to-consumer engagement and new, rich data sources, are beginning to encounter a bifurcation of risk and client characteristics.