Consumer- the biggest beneficiary from automation of end-to-end insurance value chain

Insurance sectors are never viewed as technology providers. When the word “insurance” comes up it strikes our mind those long back-office operations, heavy reliance on manual work, and outdated methods and legacy systems that make achieving the goal of customer satisfaction a nightmare.

Moreover, the relationship between an insurer and its customers has always been infrequent, transactional, and financial interaction. As a result, insurers have never felt the need for technological transformation. However, after the surge of Covid 19, the insurance industry definitely felt the need for evolution. In order to deliver a seamless digital-first experience and ensure the overall customer experience is positive, the industry call for insurers to be more agile and open to change and innovation.

That being said, many insurers have already transformed themselves digitally to offer convenience, security, choice, and comparison to their customer. IoT, telematics, drones, blockchain, smart contracts, AI, and ML are providing new ways to measure, control, and price risk, engage with customers, reduce cost, improve efficiency and increase customer expectations.

Insurtech solutions help insurers in improving the value chain at every stage. The emerging technologies help in addressing customer demands, creating efficiencies, and reducing costs in the insurance industry. It does not only transform and fragment the value chain but it has also deconstructed it to the level where there are no more legacy processes from the product design to the claim management but a dynamic and circular process led by constant changes in customer’s behavioral habits and needs.

Let’s have a look:

o   New Models, Personalized Products- The digital economy will make usage-based, on-demand, and 'all-in-one' insurance lifestyle products more relevant.

o   AI & Automation for Faster Claims- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI will occupy center stage in insurance, driven by newer data channels, better data processing capabilities, and advancements in AI algorithms.

o   Advanced Analytics & Proactiveness- Advanced analytics will be deployed to dynamically segment users and needs, model behaviors and identify exceptions, adjust policy prices, optimize business strategies, and identify new growth opportunities.

o   InsurTech Partnerships- With an increasing demand for innovative products and services from millennials, such collaboration will become a critical imperative.

o   Mainstreaming Blockchain- Blockchain technology will provide the advantage of secure data management across multiple interfaces and stakeholders without loss of integrity.

In a nutshell, meeting customer demands is going to be the utmost priority of insurance providers in the coming years, especially when technological advancements are on a rapid rise. Even when technologies and digitization have existed for the past many years, new advances such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain technology, and more are expected to disrupt the insurance sector in terms of onboarding and servicing customers. Automatic updating of customer information, needs & options, gathering customer data on the basis of their behavior, and handling of claims are just a few examples of how the upcoming technologies are going to rule the insurance field. Imagining the insurance world without AI, the Internet of Things and many technological advancements like such would be impossible in the future ahead of us.