Leading the way

This time last year Bought By Many announced we’re stepping beyond paperless claims by pushing our entire claims process online (of course we will always offer a telephone or live chat alternative if any customer prefers). We called this service Snap Claims. A year later over 50% of claims are being made online. Nice.

Just last week RSA announced they were making online claims possible for their pet insurance business. Sadly, despite us showing this was possible for all types of claims, the RSA proposition is just for continuation claims (claims where this is the second, or subsequent, part of an existing claim). First time claims still require the download of a form, manual completion and then scanning an uploading or putting into the post (….snail mail…).

How do we feel about this?

Clearly delighted that we have been, yet again, able to lead the way but at the same time disappointed that RSA haven’t gone far enough. Come on, folks – we’ve shown you how to do it, just copy. How hard can that be?

Frustratingly, this is the only element of our offering that they’ve chosen to copy. We still are the only pet insurer in the UK that makes a three-point commitment at renewal:

So if RSA are going to flatter us by copying, why don’t they go the whole hog and truly turn themselves into a consumer-centric?

We understand how important the claims process is to our customers, it is the core reason our Feefo rating (which includes claimants, unlike many other insurers’ customer feedback scores) is 4.7/ 5.

However, this understanding seems to be lost on much of the insurance industry. But change it is coming. Over the last year the proportion of UK home and car insurers that had an online claims process has increased from 4% to 27%, according to Altus Consulting.

A positive step but that’s still more than two thirds of general insurers that rely on paper or telephone claims in 2019.

While the rest of the industry plays catch-up, we’ll continue to innovate and lead the way. Watch this space….