COVID-19 affected every industry sector across the world. The insurance industry has been affected both positively and negatively depending on the circumstances. It is now time to analyze those ups and downs and find what a post-COVID-19 world has for the industry.
Many insurance implications are arising from COVID-19. These implications will bring mainly three levels of change – short-term, mid-term, and long-term.
The Short-Term
The short-term or near-term impacts mainly include customer experience. With the effect of social distancing and the fear of the pandemic, many transactions have shifted from an in-person mode to an online-mode. This might have affected many customers but now most of the users are familiar with the online practices. But still, for the short term, some discrepancies can arise that need personalized service provided to the users.
Make sure that your customers have user-friendly and properly working channels available for them to buy and service their insurance. If your company is exclusively agent-driven, ensure that your agents have robust portals to work with their customers. Also, enable, and maintain two-way communication facilities with the company and the customers.
Forbes recently reported that starting January 2020, online life insurance sales increased 30-50% for companies with speedy apps that used data/algorithm-driven underwriting, particularly for those 45 and under, the prime growth market of Millennials and Gen Z.
The Mid-Term
The digital experience becomes the no.1 priority across all lines of business. For the insurance industry, this meant a decreased customer experience through in-person contacts like claims, payments, printing, etc, and increased purchase of online services. This paves way for the need for extra cautiousness to online fraud. Digital and cloud-based solutions are important to maintain customer and company safety and security.
There are also rising scopes for new products such as cyber insurance. Any change to the company’s working and business model must be evaluated crucially and marketed properly. The change of working environment also needs to be a priority. Many companies have now shifted to fully remote working conditions but even then, proper assurance and coverage need to be given to the employees.
The Long-Term
The digital focus of the business will continue long-term across all aspects of an insurer’s operating model. Development of partner ecosystems, whether for technology, data, channels, or other needs will rapidly build-out, changing how insurers work with partners but also within new ecosystems – like mobility, health, and wellness, financial services, retail and more.
More complex innovations will take part in the digital markets molding them into commercial lines with more products and technologies.
