How unleashing data can free insurance agents
Automation isn’t about replacing your human workforce. It’s about making your workforce more valuable.
Agencies, MGAs and MGUs have plenty of choices when it comes to technology that helps them give quotes and process claims quickly.
But in today’s landscape, agents need more comprehensive technology to run and scale a competitive insurance business.
Investing in modern tools to improve the customer experience across the insurance policy distribution lifecycle is crucial, however it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Agents also need technology that plays well with existing investments and analyzes every angle of the business to identify opportunities and understand where the business might be losing profits.
Automation can bring enhanced value to every phase of your agency’s funnel and policy journey. When agencies leverage automation, they have the power to analyze every step of the insurance lifecycle, eliminate manual data entry, and provide the faster, error-free experience customers have come to expect.
Automation for front, middle and back-office processes
Digital transformation and technology in the insurance sector have been largely focused on customer transactions, and with good reason. Customers have high expectations when it comes to the digital insurance experience. They want the flexibility to renew a policy, file a claim or make a payment from their device, without having to speak with an agent. In fact, 87% of policyholders indicated that the claims experience with their insurer directly impacted their decision to remain with that carrier. Speed of settlement and process transparency are the most important contributors to the frictionless customer experience.
However, we also need to consider that for every customer transaction or touchpoint, there’s a corresponding back-office process or task that needs to happen. These back-office functions are invisible to the customer but vital nonetheless. When agents perform these processes manually, productivity can drag and there’s a greater risk of human error. If agents are working with outdated or incomplete data when carrying out these processes, that’s when the customer experience can be negatively impacted. Every day, insurance distribution professionals spend too much of their time handling preventable crises, such as:
- Lost renewals
- Overlooked leads
- Mis-filed customer information
- Missed compliance deadlines
- Policy cancellations
These kinds of challenges remain common because too many brokers and agents are still relying on fragmented technology, manual processes and fallible intuition to run their businesses. This is where automation can be a game-changer for insurers by ensuring that processes are being completed using the most up-to-date information, in real-time.
Assisting, not replacing
Automation is the engine of the modern insurance agency. Do agency leaders really have a clear picture of much time their employees spend on repetitive tasks? What is the value of reducing time and frustration for your workers and customers? Automation answers all of these questions and more — provided that it’s a truly end-to-end solution.
Don’t fall into the “automation will replace the agent” trap. Automation isn’t about replacing your human workforce. It’s about making your workforce more valuable. Automation can take over repetitive, mundane tasks so your agents have the freedom to deliver the personalized, revenue-driving human interactions and services that set your company apart.
Automation can deliver the streamlined, fast, error-free experience customers expect while freeing up agents to do more complex work. Here are just a few examples of where automation can make an immediate, positive impact:
- Onboarding new clients: Automation tools make the onboarding process faster and more efficient. Customers will have shorter wait times, and employees will spend less time chasing down responses.
- Making policy documents available digitally: Automated smart forms with e-signatures allow for efficient policy execution without printing, scanning, or mailing, even when multiple signatories at multiple locations are involved. Plus, the e-signatures are secure and legally binding. Clients and agents can access these documents anytime, even remotely.
- Reducing human error: Anytime humans are tasked with repetitive processes such as filling out forms, there is always a chance they’ll make a mistake. Automation eliminates these errors by extracting information from carrier quotes and moving that data directly into broker administration systems, quote comparisons, and proposals. It can complete and issue certificates, reconcile accounts, auto-populate forms and remove redundancy across departments and offices.
- Streamlining the renewal process: Take the stress and legwork out of policy renewals by automating back-office tasks. At renewal time, agents and customers get an automated email that the policy renewal date is coming near. Automation also moves the previous year’s customer information up to the current year, so your customers need only to verify the data. Auto-reminders triggered by the date of a policy’s renewal automatically sent via SMS/text messaging mean your agents won’t have to spend hours on the phone or sending out emails.
Historically, the insurance market has been encumbered by legacy systems that are difficult and expensive to scale and update, with siloed data and limited access to real-time management information. With automation removing the burden, insurers have the ability to break this cycle. With productivity improved and greater access to accurate, real-time data, insurers will finally have the ability to sell virtually any type of risk product and add value by helping clients manage their portfolios of coverage across experiences: health, life, mobility, personal property, commercial, and residential.
Automation, when implemented properly, helps agents support a substantially larger client base, making scalability possible. It can also help make customer interactions more satisfying for everyone involved. And, with the right technology that provides analysis of your agency’s data, every agent interaction with a customer can be personalized to meet each client’s current and future needs.
Eric Ayala (eric.ayala@novideasoft.com) is the senior vice president, Americas for Novidea, creator of the born-in-the-cloud, data-driven insurance platform that enables brokers, agents and MGAs to modernize and manage the customer insurance journey. He has more than two decades of technology startup and venture capital experience. A Silicon Valley veteran, he has led multiple Sales and Marketing teams at startups funded by prestigious VCs such as NEA and Accel and Corporate VCs such as Dell and Microsoft.
These opinions are the author’s own.
See also: