Building Resilience with Digital Technologies

As the current pandemic continues to disrupt our lives, there is a growing need to re-imagine and apply technology to how we work and interact with the world. The next few months will be challenging, especially for Insurance companies, as they face challenges on multiple fronts. For example, all customer service inquiries, sales, underwriting, and claims will require considerable attention. Insurers will have to grapple with physical distancing practices, evolve conventional products to meet the post-COVID world, and enhance their cyber-security approach to adapt to a new remote working model. We will also see changes in compliance and regulations functions that can affect the insurance value chain and impact business applications.

As we accelerate the adoption of digital technologies to be able to react quickly to the changing rules and processes dictated by the pandemic, here’s how Insurers can navigate what is next, in the new normal:

Enhance customer experience: Managing the current disruption will require insurance executives to move quickly, rely more on technology, and find new ways to engage with customers. The need for customer-related services surged during the beginning of the current pandemic. Organizations reported that call volumes have gone up by five times as they struggled to access customer data remotely and provide services in the absence of physical interactions. Firms that were most impacted were the ones least invested in self-services such as email BOTs and Chat BOTs. Having digital operations will go a long way in helping operations shift to work-from-home. Insurers should also strive for zero lapses in communications by keeping agents and customer support staffers available for clients. At the same time, encourage customers to engage via mobile apps for routine customer service needs, like starting a claim, making payments, and reviewing policies.

Strengthen Cyber-security: Remote working leaves significantly higher levels of vulnerability as we deal with an expanding and new threat surface across remote access infrastructure, remote access methods, and collaboration platforms. The same technologies arming remote workers with powerful new capabilities are also exposing them to new threats that they need to be defended from. Last-mile security -- in terms of two-step verification -- will go a long way toward improving self-service while accessing data and services. Digital muscle -- be it mobility, remote access, collaboration platforms, or cloud adoption -- has served well in these times. However, there’s plenty more to be done to make systems more stable, robust, and secure while helping the workforce to embrace the new way of working.

Move to the Cloud: Insurers should re-assess their operations in the broadest terms possible. This begins with gauging flexibility and the ability to work from anywhere. Insurers can achieve this by applying cloud and poly-cloud strategies and making them safe by using robust cyber-security protocols. Once that is in place, companies can further support their employees in this trying time by creating user-friendly, bring-your-own-device protocols. Cloud-native platforms are fast becoming the norm for most organisations irrespective of industry. As the resiliency of cloud-hosted business platforms is established beyond any doubt, there is a new impetus to modernise core business platforms faster. Companies with robust cloud-enabled systems can shift to decentralised teams quickly, and begin to prepare for clients who have questions or changing needs.

Use Data, AI, and Automation: In uncertain times, Insurers should develop the ability to become increasingly aware of all the inputs. This can be accelerated by bringing automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to bear on the expanding universe of data that is collected to search for meaning in the information and developing dashboards to signal decision-makers when data shifts out of specifications. Such dashboards and active listening will prove critical for insurers as they continue to assess and re-imagine customer experiences for a socially distanced world. Furthermore, the usage of new tools such as Webapps, Zoom, MS teams to encourage collaboration within the enterprise, and the extended ecosystem of partners will also call for investments in AI technologies such as NLP and Deep Learning to accelerate assessments and claims. Finally, traditional life insurance medical exams will undergo a shift as we see more and more carriers moving towards electronic health records and self-examination kits.

People will look to insurance organisations for support -- after all, the industry must be an enabling and uplifting force for customers in vulnerable financial situations – and they (Insurance companies) can play a pivotal role in building resilience and continuity during times of economic stress, by helping companies and households manage risks and cushion against losses.

As Insurers prepare for what comes next, they should experiment, try new tactics, pilot new technology, and prepare for the reset that comes after COVID-19 runs its course. By leveraging digital technologies and their institutional expertise, insurers have an opportunity to demonstrate their worth to clients and their communities.