How Digital Innovation Is Impacting the Insurance Sector

How Digital Innovation Is Impacting the Insurance Sector

Technology is changing our world in so many ways: personally, commercially and financially. You can bet your bottom dollar you won’t find a business that hasn’t been impacted by today’s fast-changing digital tech. It helps businesses perform better and faster, deliver great personalised service, operate easily across borders, access new markets, and sell their wares to more people.

Just one of the sectors to benefit from all this innovation is the insurance industry. Look back just twenty years and it’s almost unrecognisable. Like everyone else, insurers have moved a lot of their activity online in recent years and now it’s a very different animal. So what tools and software do savvy insurers use to help keep their clients happy and satisfied?

Comparing the market

There are numerous insurance comparison platforms, and consumers love to use them. The services they offer are usually free, and they save ordinary people and businesses a great deal of money. You don’t need to visit an insurer website or broker unless you really want to. You can compare prices from tens of top insurers in one place, identify the cheapest or the best, and buy your policy online as well.

All this means insurers and their customers are closer than ever, which is good for positive relationships. Insurers benefit too. Once you understand the financial behaviour of your customers, for example, you can use that insight to sell more, up-sell, cross sell and build loyalty. There’s more. Some go as far as to say comparison sites can reduce the underwriting risks inherent in new business, another good way to drive a healthier bottom line. 

These sites let you make a detailed comparison of insurance policies, and the associated documentation. Some also let you request insurance certificates and track the progress of insurance claims, which improves efficiency. Consumers can, if they want to, make themselves familiar with alternative policies, pin down things that aren’t covered, and identify unnecessary duplicate policies. And they can do it all remarkably quickly and easily.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

AI has enormous potential. We’re only just scratching the surface. There are all sorts of practical insurance applications for the technology, particularly in cognitive computing, which could ultimately help competing insurers enhance the level of automation they already provide to spot and cut risks, Support better, faster decision-making, and boost productivity.

Thanks to AI, small and medium insurance companies will be able to offer more sophisticated, complex, personalised and competitive products and services. Cost effective, real-time data collection software products are already making it possible to get much deeper insights into clients’ needs and preferences, and scalability makes cognitive computing seriously desirable as far as the insurance industry is concerned. You can imagine how serving more clients while minimising operating costs results in more profit. 

On the down side, entire departments could eventually disappear as technology takes over. People will probably lose their jobs. On the bright side AIs will be able to carry out all sorts of tasks that humans find tedious and time consuming, leaving workers to do the more interesting and challenging work. 

Smart healthcare solutions

Smart healthcare is huge as well, and the insurance industry is experiencing a boost in indirect prospects because of it. Cognitive computing and artificial intelligence mean insurers can deliver new, better products by analysing structured and unstructured data that comes from wearable medical tech like trackers, sensors and even – eventually – clothing that delivers data about the wearer. Knowledge is power. It makes insurance underwriting easier and more accurate. And again, it means more revenue.

At the same time people who wear medical AI are more aware of their own health and well-being, which means they tend to take better care of themselves, which in turn reduces claims on policies like life assurance and health insurance.

Modern database marketing

Database marketing first came about in the 1980s. But with very little data to play with, it never really took off. There isn’t a lot you can do with simple contact details, databases back then were fairly unsophisticated, and demographic analysis back then was a very blunt instrument. Now, with Big Data the norm, data-driven marketing is the new rock ‘n roll. And the insurance sector is diving right in to enjoy the results of marketing that delivers deeper, more statistically relevant solutions and insights than ever before.

Imagine you’re a marketer who wants to examine the German insurance market. You can dive deep into balance sheets, IT and systems, revenue and employee numbers, and a whole lot more. Using the information you can target certain records, create segments, do AB testing on your work to identify the best-performing segments and the most popular creative treatments. You can easily see how a good, detailed Germany email database packed with detail, including email addresses and contact names, can help insurers generate a much better return on their marketing investment.

At the same time the gap between insurance companies and their clients is smaller, and consumers are happier because they only receive properly targeted and personalised marketing offers, rather than less-relevant ones.

Who will survive the longest?

The insurers who move with the times, stay ahead of new tech, adopt new ways of operating and treat their clients accordingly, will be those that’ll survive this great digital revolution we’re going through. Those who ignore the brave new world we’re operating in, neglect new tech and carry on marketing the old-school way will ultimately fail.