Insurance IT leaders herald new era for digital customer experience
The
insurance
industry
is
undergoing
a
sea
change,
with
IT
playing
a
crucial
role
in
rolling
out
digital
customer
experiences
for
policyholders
and
agents,
as
in-person
meetings
all
but
vanish
in
the
post-pandemic
era.
The
insurance
industry
is
undergoing
a
sea
change,
with
IT
playing
a
crucial
role
in
rolling
out
digital
customer
experiences
for
policyholders
and
agents,
as
in-person
meetings
all
but
vanish
in
the
post-pandemic
era.
This
pivot
to
digital
customer
experiences
has
become
a
new
insurance
industry
imperative,
as
John
Aflac,
Liberty
Mutual,
MassMutual,
MetLife,
and
a
host
of
other
insurers
have
embraced
digital
strategies
for
interacting
with
and
delivering
new
services
to
customers
—
in
some
cases,
integrating
advanced
cloud
technologies
such
as
analytics
and
machine
learning
to
design
new
insurance
policies.
Bill
Pappas,
who
joined
MetLife
as
head
of
global
technology
and
operations
three
years
ago
to
drive
the
CEO’s
customer-first
strategy,
exemplifies
the
new
insurance
CIO
ethos.
“We
are
paying
very
close
attention
to
trends
from
a
customer
perspective.
We
call
our
approach
high
tech
and
high
touch,
because
that
takes
into
account
the
very
clear
feedback
that
we’re
getting
from
our
customers
—
that
they
want
digital
solutions
to
take
the
transactional
nature
from
our
relationship
away
in
a
way
that
is
intuitive
and
secure,
but
they
want
us
to
be
there
when
it
matters
the
most,”
he
says.
For
Pappas,
the
customer
has
become
the
“North
Star”
in
the
digital
era,
and
other
insurance
CIOs
concur,
as
improving
the
customer
experience
and
operational
excellence
—
not
revenue
growth
—
tops
the
list
of
insurance
digitalization
initiatives
in
2023,
according
to
a
recent
Gartner
survey
of
CIOs
across
81
countries.
“The
customer
experience
in
life
insurance
has
not
been
very
digital,”
says
Gartner
analyst
Kimberly
Harris-Ferrante,
noting
the
very
traditional
human-to-human
interactions
in
the
industry.
“Now
it’s
really
more
about
[digital]
customer
experience
and
operational
efficiency,
particularly
given
we’re
just
coming
out
of
COVID.”
The
seismic
shift
toward
digital
services
during
the
pandemic
served
as
a
wakeup
call
for
the
insurance
industry,
which
by
and
large
lagged
other
industries
in
technology
modernization,
analysts
say.
“In
the
last
few
years,
the
[insurance
industry]
has
taken
us
in
some
new
directions,
being
more
remote
and
virtual
and
changing
behaviors
than
we
would
have
seen
in
2019
or
before,”
Harris-Ferrante
says.
And
for
insurers
like
MetLife,
digital
customer-centricity
means
new
approaches
to
serving
agents
and
policyholders
alike
—
without
straying
from
the
heart
of
the
insurance
relationship,
the
human
touch.
“In
some
cases
we
are
b-to-b;
in
some
cases
we’re
b-to-b-to-c,”
Pappas
says.
“We
will
digitize
mostly
the
transactional
nature
of
the
product,
but
we
do
want
to
safeguard
that
ability
for
a
person
to
be
there
for
the
customers
where
that
matters
the
most.”
IT
as
industry
differentiator
Insurers
and
financial
services
firms
like
MassMutual,
of
Springfield,
Mass.,
are
substituting
face-to-face
meetings
with
advanced,
value-added
digital
interactions
with
customers.
But
the
impact
of
IT
in
revitalizing
what
insurance
companies
offer
their
customers
goes
well
beyond
facilitating
video
meetings
and
digitized
documentation.
Tara
Long,
MassMutual’s
newly
appointed
CIO,
points
to
the
company’s
patented
enterprise
data
application
platform
and
enhanced
cybersecurity
as
integrated
digital
services
that
add
significant
value
to
its
digital
customers.
For
example,
digital
customers
may
use
biometric
login
with
Touch
ID
and
Face
ID
for
security.
Other
key
resources
that
benefit
the
customer
experience
include
BI
and
analytics
for
anything
from
actuarial
pricing
to
risk
selection
and
customer
intelligence,
the
CIO
says.
“There
are
a
lot
of
self-service
capabilities
and
new
digital
portals
that
are
going
to
help
service
our
policyholders
as
well
as
our
financial
advisors,”
Long
says.
“There’s
a
lot
that
goes
into
our
digital
transformation.
It’s
a
journey
with
lots
of
components
to
it.”
Acrisure,
of
Grand
Rapids,
Mich.,
for
instance,
uses
artificial
intelligence
to
build
custom
insurance
policies
and
financial
services
for
businesses
as
well
as
consumer
policies.
Matt
Marolda,
the
company’s
chief
innovation
officer
who
came
on
board
in
2021,
has
played
a
key
role
developing
AI
models
for
“custom-tailored”
insurance
packages,
for
example.
The
COVID
wakeup
call
For
most
insurance
companies,
the
global
shutdowns
that
followed
COVID-19
were
the
tipping
point.
When
the
pandemic
hit,
Aflac
CIO
Rich
Gilbert
felt
like
the
firm’s
insurance
agent
business
could
be
a
dead
duck.
Yet
Gilbert
tapped
the
company’s
Hatch
Innovation
Lab
to
build
a
new
virtual
enrollment
system
that
had
its
origin
in
the
data
center
but
was
quickly
redesigned
for
the
cloud
amid
the
pandemic.
“COVID
was
the
digital
disruptor.
Our
agents
sell
to
small,
medium,
large
businesses
at
their
work
site
and
now
there
was
no
work
site,”
says
Gilbert,
who
signed
on
as
CIO
at
Aflac
in
2019.
“So
we
had
to
kind
of
rethink
and
reimagine
our
whole
model
of
engaging
with
policyholders
or
potential
policyholders.”
Aflac’s
Virtual
Enrollment
Experience
fully
utilized
the
cloud
and
SaaS
solutions
in
its
construction,
Gilbert
says.
“We
needed
the
speed
of
the
cloud
to
assemble
a
new
experience
for
agents
to
work
remotely.
The
Virtual
Enrollment
Experience
is
fulfilled
via
a
microsite
customized
for
each
account
and
is
hosted
in
the
cloud
(AWS).
Each
microsite
is
composed
of
several
components,
including
product
information
and
videos
to
inform,
a
decision
support
tool
to
help
decide,
a
calendaring
tool
to
schedule
a
virtual
consultation
with
an
agent,
a
virtual
collaboration
platform
via
Webex
to
consult
on
product
offerings,
and
a
connection
to
enroll
and
e-sign
to
complete
the
process,”
he
says.
Aflac
also
expanded
its
marketing
outreach
to
direct
customers
to
microsites
where
they
can
learn
about
Aflac’s
supplemental
cancer
insurance,
set
up
a
virtual
meeting
with
an
agent,
and
use
the
homegrown
system
to
sign
on
to
policies.
“We
actually
built
a
whole
new
enrollment
platform
that
is
much
like
an
Amazon
capability,”
Gilbert
says.
John
Hancock
is
another
insurance
company
that
overhauled
its
operations
to
be
more
digital-centric
by
integrating
SaaS
services
such
as
Clareto
to
simplify
the
insurance
purchasing
process
and
reduce
underwriting
times,
while
using
its
homegrown
JH
eApp
to
streamline
the
overall
life
insurance
process.
Building
for
tomorrow
With
new
platforms
evolving,
insurance
CIOs
are
eyeing
new
possibilities
for
the
future.
Liberty
Mutual,
which
has
been
an
industry
leader
in
digital
transformation,
operates
a
hybrid
cloud
infrastructure
built
primarily
on
Amazon
Web
Services
but
with
specific
uses
of
Microsoft
Azure
and,
lesser
so,
Google
Cloud
Platform.
Roughly
60%
of
Liberty
Mutual’s
data
runs
on
the
cloud
and
taps
into
an
array
of
business
applications
and
analytics
dashboards
that
yield
real-time
insights
and
predictions,
recently-retired
CIO
James
McGlennon
told
CIO.com
last
year.
The
insurance
company
under
his
direction
spent
17
years
developing
a
robust
platform
that
today
enables
consumers
to
access
an
automated
claims
system
that
uses
chatbots,
cameras,
and
e-mail
to
initiate
a
claim
and
rent
a
car
while
a
machine
learning
model
analyzes
the
photograph
of
the
damaged
vehicle
to
detect
whether
its
airbag
has
been
deployed,
for
instance,
and
to
determine
immediately
whether
a
vehicle
is
totaled
or
the
damage
is
limited
to
a
fender
bender.
That’s
today.
The
platform
will
enable
data
scientists
to
build
the
next
generation
of
applications
for
its
consumers
tomorrow.
“We’re
really
trying
to
understand
the
metaverse
and
what
it
might
mean
for
us,”
said
McGlennon.
“We’re
focused
on
augmented
reality
and
virtual
reality.
We’re
doing
a
lot
on
AI
and
machine
learning
and
robotics.
We’ve
already
built
up
blockchain
and
we’ll
continue
with
all
those.”
These
new
customer
digital
experiences
extend
well
beyond
requiring
customers
to
fill
out
policy
applications
digitally
or
use
chatbots
for
answering
basic
insurance
questions.
When
designing
modern
policy
applications
for
digital
customers,
data
scientists
at
insurers
will
continue
to
use
the
cloud,
advanced
data
tools,
business
intelligence,
and
machine
learning
models
that
will
change
the
entire
business
practices
—
not
just
the
method
of
communication,
insurance
CIOs
point
out.
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