Six desires for the digital transformation of insurance

 

Today we live, rightly or wrongly, in an era of attraction, of aesthetic, of appeal where the brand is king. What’s more, we are all brands now.

Depending on how much of a digital native you are, we broadcast our lives on social channels; we provide intimate insight into every part of our lives in return for reward; be it a like, a share or comment.

In the war of attraction some products, services, people and brands are always going to come out on top. But insurance, cool, attractive and sexy? Not in my lifetime.

According to the respected ‘Superbrands’ annual league table; British Airways has ranked No1 for a business and consumer brand in 2017.

Now, we can hear the observant among you screaming, ‘Power outage and IT disaster’ and of course this year’s table was produced prior to this most recent event. But the longer in tooth among you, will be pointing out the BA, as it’s affectionately known, has faced and addressed difficulties in the past and dealt with them well.

 

Being an airline is no walk in the park. Every day you are moving around the world the most precious cargo, the industry is highly-regulated and is aggressively price sensitive. There are real parallels and lessons we, in the insurance industry, can take away from this.

What British Airways has not done is re-invent air travel, it is not delivering a new type of flight. It’s not trying to repackage or replace. It has had a singular and rigorous focus on the customer, their complete end-to-end journey and building lifelong value and loyalty.

BA understands that customers don’t book a holiday to enjoy travel, although some do, for the majority, it’s all about the destination. So, in some ways, the journey or flight, is a necessary evil.

Sound familiar?

We live in fascinating times in the insurance industry, we are at a critical inflection point, and change is the only certainty.

Today we all need to rally and define a new direction for how customers search for and buy insurance. What’s not required now is a new kind of insurance or some sort of reinvention.

Insurance remains an important but necessary complication in people’s lives and so dressing it up, trying to make it sexy, is just akin to putting lipstick on a pig. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t appeal.

 

At Inshur, we have put some thought to how we believe the insurance industry must evolve next:

Our six desires for the digital transformation of insurance:

1. We need to unify and agree to move forward much faster, in unity and with a spirit of cooperation, from insurtech start-up to global carrier.

2. We must develop a combined new language and story the works for all, blending cultures and sharing best practice to the benefit of the customer, not the industry.

3. Customer experience (CX) must sit at the centre of everything we do. We must create frictionless environments where customers can feel secure and transact fast.

4. Focus on transparency – for too many years, there has been an ‘us and them’ mentality between insurance provider and customer. We have an opportunity change this adversarial relationship.

5. Become entirely digitally transformed and more real-time, data driven – to improve products, service and experience for the customer.

6. Act now, be decisive and focused on the customer. According to the PWC – How InsurTech is reshaping insurance, report: 74% of insurance companies believe that some part of their business is at risk of disruption.