I spent some time this week with CXO clients from the Insurance industry and our discussion touched on topics that are relevant more broadly. In thinking about the customer trends that the insurance industry needs to embrace, my focus is on the following:
- The customer is now ‘inside’ the enterprise. The customer perspective is fast becoming the one through which all transformation is shaped. This goes beyond purely influencing the customer experience, but also into the delivery of seamless operations, and experimentation with new business models;
- Traditionally B2B industries are shifting to adopt the behaviours of B2C. By harvesting real time consumer insights, companies can increase sales, customer intimacy and improve the margin on sold products. In other words “sweating” the B2B channel;
- The application of the principle of “next best action” to the employee. How to use real time data and insight to improve employee decision making, and devolve corporate governance to the lowest acceptable point;
- Adoption of the principle that if you want to be consumer-centric you need to also be employee-centric. In today and tomorrow’s markets, your employee value proposition needs to be inseparable from the customer promise that you are making.
Where should the insurance industry be spending its dime? A lot has been written about the increased use of telematics and IOT, but from a transformation perspective, I see a focus on:
- People and culture. Culture is often cited as the biggest blocker for insurance firms in becoming truly digitally enabled. Fostering an openness to test, learn and fail, within reason, is often deeply counter-cultural for insurance organizations. Meaningful cultural shift against a backdrop of increased regulation and fear of conduct, risk must be approached intelligently;
- Driving convergence of the Business and IT operating models, shaping smart interaction between on-demand processes, systems of record and systems of engagement;
- Improving data access and interrogation and revisiting the governance model to enable “next best action” by employees and understanding the role that Independent Financial Advisors (i.e. the B2B channel) play within the re-formed consumer value proposition;
- Building a meaningful eco-system of agency, business and IT partners, of which the enterprise is the focal point, and transition to on-demand interactions across it to speed up personalized consumer interaction and levels of service quality
