The Last Mile of Insurance

Over the last decade, most companies have focused most of their digital investments on automation and self-service. This first wave of digital transformation has provided important foundational capabilities, such as mobile apps, client portals, and the ability to transact on simple policies well-understood by the consumer.

The next digital wave is even more important and exciting. Accelerated by the pandemic, we’ve seen how the time has come to equally leverage digital to rearchitect how the field works and to strengthen rather than replace human connection. Using Hearsay as the front-end between agents and customers, companies like Guardian Life are redistributing marketing and servicing work to corporate teams to allow reps to focus on value-added selling and relationship activities.

Today at InsureTech Connect, I had an exciting conversation with Guardian Life CEO Andrew McMahon about the next decade of digital transformation, focused on human client experience to drive relationship loyalty and business growth. Here are some of things we talked about:

1. Guardian Life was founded in 1860, and is celebrating 160 years this year. Covid is not the first global crisis Guardian has had to navigate. They’ve been able to apply lessons learned from previous pandemics including the 1918 Spanish flu and world wars to navigating the uncertainties of this year and maintain the long view of what needs to be done.
2. Tech is disrupting every aspect of the insurance value chain from product and underwriting to marketing, distribution, and claims. As an insurance executive, it can feel daunting and hard to know where to start. But one area matters most: what customers experience. The most effective digital transformations start with the customer. Not what the carrier ideally hopes the customer will experience, but what the customer actually experiences– the last mile. Not customer surveys, but actually solving customer needs when and how they want. Start there, and the priorities will become clear.
3. The first wave of digital transformation (automation and self-service) delivers customer convenience and streamlines basic tasks, such as account look-ups and updating payment methods. The big next opportunity is human client experience– authentic digital engagement delivers customer loyalty, deepens relationships, and drives business growth through higher prospect-to-policy conversion rates, retention, cross-sell, and customer lifetime value.
4. So-called personalization today doesn’t feel very personal. Consider this– have you ever gotten an automated email and thought to yourself how special it is and felt that it was uniquely made for you? In contrast, advisors and agents play a very important role creating a personal and personalized experience. Digital should be used to amplify this human connection. Life insurance is still very much sold, not bought the vast majority of the time; it is a personal business.
5. Combining the authentic human relationship with a trusted expert with digital scale will allow advisors to maintain ongoing touch points with customers– which is increasingly important both for retention and cross-sell and also for regulatory reasons, such as RegBI. In the past, there were too many insurance customers who never heard from their agent again after the initial transaction.
6. There is a role for direct-to-consumer and also intermediated channels. Today, most carriers approach each channel in a siloed manner. A unified last-mile engagement layer will allow carriers to blend digital, contact center, and field channels in a frictionless way for customers.

For centuries, the insurance category has played a critical role in helping businesses and families survive the hardest of times. In the past seven months, we’ve seen unprecedented human connection take place on our platforms between agents and advisors and their customers– and all signs point to this authentic digital engagement sustaining well beyond the pandemic.

Thank you Jay and ITC for featuring Hearsay and me this year, and thank you to Andrew and Guardian Life for being one of our boldest, most forward-thinking customers!

Adapted from Hearsay Systems blog post: https://hearsaysystems.com/2020/10/the-last-mile-of-insurance-keynote-at-insuretech-connect-2020-itc