Digital acceleration, enhancement, and distribution plans are a must technical initiative for today’s property and casualty insurers. 2019 projections are estimating that about four out of five property and casualty (P&C) insurers either have, or are planning to set up, wholly digital sales processes in which humans are involved only when customers need advice.
But taking digitalization from concept to reality still poses major challenges for many P&C insurers. Here, we look at some of top challenges of implementing a digitalization strategy in the P&C environment.
The Impact of Mobile
In a 2013 article for Wired, Christina Bonnington predicted that the world would contain 24 billion connected devices by 2020 and that the Internet of Things would result in people doing ever more tasks from their smartphones. We hit this target in 2018. So it is no surprise that mobile is an essential consideration for P&C insurance companies.
Yet going mobile poses some challenges for P&C insurance companies. For one thing, customers expect to be able to do everything from pay premiums to file claims, get driving tips or find a repair shop via a mobile app. That’s a lot of work for an app to do — and the more an app does, the slower and thus less appealing it is likely to be. Another challenge is the integration of older technologies with new ones. These apps can seem more convenient to customers, but they can also make certain measurements or calculations more difficult.
Rethinking the Customer Journey
For insurers, the journey of digital transformation will involve rethinking an insurer’s value proposition and internal business operations, embracing data and advanced analytics, creating and supporting all means of engagement and automation across all the company, and delivering enriched customer solutions that are thoroughly integrated with internal operations as a seamless, personalized experience from start to finish and everywhere in between.
For P&C insurers battling in a fiercely competitive marketplace, digitalization is a multibillion-dollar opportunity. Using digital tools, insurers can lift profits, while delivering new services, lower premiums and an all-around better experience to their customers.
Digital is the thread that will connect and unite all systems, processes, and strategic initiatives and tie them together into an enterprise that is ready for the future. And digital transformation is the strategic initiative that will set the foundation, set the context, and set the direction for the next-generation P&C insurance company.
