2020 is the year technology will transform the commercial lines experience
An outdated process will finally see significant changes as customers demand a complete and modern digital insurance experience.
Commercial lines represent a growing insurance segment where agencies have the opportunity to specialize and differentiate their business. At the same time, every business is different and complex, making the application and renewal process inherently inefficient for both agents and their clients. These inefficiencies have plagued agencies, carriers, and insureds for decades.
As we enter a new year and decade, the broken and hampered down manual commercial lines process is on the verge of being transformed for years to come as a result of advancements in technology and automation.
Here are three ways technological innovations will transform the commercial lines experience in 2020 and beyond.
1. Paper and PDF forms used for collecting commercial lines data from insureds will become digital
Commercial lines are growing significantly because new liabilities and insurance needs are being created daily. For agencies and brokers, specializing in a given industry is not only a growing trend but a major source of new revenue. For example, emerging technology is creating unique insurance needs and complexities, such as insuring a drone or an autonomous vehicle.
Now more than ever, agents must take on their advisory role to ensure their clients are receiving accurate coverage. To do this, they need to spend less time collecting information, rekeying data, and pre-filling forms, and more time getting to know the customer and their particular risks.
With the technological advancements of online smart-forms, 2020 will bring a new level of efficiency to agents and their clients. Information collected via online portals and smart-forms allows for duplicate data to auto-populate across multiple forms, reducing keystrokes and saving both time and E&O exposure. Smart-forms can be customized by agents to better serve specific clients’ needs, shortening the overall submission process and allowing for agents to get to market faster. As a result of these advancements, we will continue to see the commercial application and renewal process shift away from paper and into the digital world.
2. An automated commercial submission process will remove friction for the entire value chain
Commercial lines is made up of a three-part value chain, including the insured, the agent and the insurer. Up until this point, processing information from one stakeholder to the next has been fragmented, slow, and complicated, creating negative results for all three parties. The insured, who has become accustomed to immediate service in the age of Amazon Prime, is stuck with a poor customer experience. The agent, who wants to remove operational inefficiencies to make their jobs easier and be able to focus on revenue-generating tasks, is forced to build complex systems to avoid E&O exposure and get to market. And the insurer, who wants to process and analyze risk more effectively, is forced to ingest and analyze information scattered across a multitude of files and documents, resulting in a manual quoting process.
As more commercial lines information is collected in a standardized data format through the means of online portals, smart-forms and cloud-based technology, we will begin to see a future where the three-part value chain becomes optimized and streamlined. Policy data will flow from the insured, through the agent, and to an underwriter without having to touch a piece of paper or a PDF file, and the time it takes to deliver accurate quotes back to the insured will become significantly faster.
3. Technology will improve the customer experience as manual processes are eliminated
The difficulty of processing commercial lines has increased significantly as insurance becomes more complex. Simultaneously, insureds are demanding a simpler, more automated insurance experience, making these two forces at odds with each other. This customer demand will drive commercial agents and insurers to double down on automation to create a better customer experience. There is no business without the insured, and their demands will ultimately force the industry to innovate.
In an effort to deliver a more personalized customer experience, we’ll see agencies move towards specializations. When focusing on specific niches, agencies can build scalable processes and increase their revenue per employee, all while becoming better risk advisors to their clients and improving the overall experience.
2020 is the start of a new decade and, in many ways, the start of something new for the commercial insurance industry. The stage is set with consumers identifying the subpar experience that currently exists, and the tools that are now available to change that. Advancements do not slow down for anyone, and in fact, they challenge everyone to innovate.
Michael Furlong (indio@n6a.com) is the CEO of Indio Technologies, a division of Applied Systems. The opinions expressed here are his own.
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