Rapid response
In the initial phase, at the start of the pandemic in 2020, insurance companies responded by taking rapid measures to guarantee the continuity of their activities and help their clients to deal with the situation. Once into 2021, the sector was immersed in the recovery phase, readying itself internally for the time when the health and economic conditions would allow it to move on to a third phase of increased growth.
The big boost of the pandemic
And in these three phases, the digital transformation made all the difference. When the pandemic started, technology helped insurers to change to distance working settings and ensured that their employees had the right tools to remain connected with brokers and customers. Strangely enough, while the pandemic caused many economic sectors to grind to a halt, in the insurance industry it actually worked as a driver in its digital transformation, which had already been underway. Once again, technology, and the level of progress that each individual company had attained in this aspect, defined their recovery and subsequent growth.
The power of a click
But what exactly does this digital transformation mean to insurance companies? As the Deloitte Report explains, it represents a genuine revolution in the customer-company relationship. Customers are now multi-channel, and require increasingly speedy, accurate, personalized and comprehensive responses. They are demanding solutions from insurance companies from their mobile devices, comparing opinions on the social media, and calling for more online functionalities that allow products and services to be adapted to their personal requirements. All from their mobile devices.
Integrating experiences in a single journey
One of the main challenges for insurance companies – apart from the purely technological side – is to be able to offer customers an integrated experience on the multiple points of contact that they can now establish with the company. To do so, as the Report explains, huge efforts are being made to design what have been coined as “customer journeys”. This is being done gradually to “educate” consumers about this new insurance culture.
Alongside this huge push for the digitization and automation of processes, the Report also points out the need for insurance companies to invest in cybersecurity. With most workers operating remotely and with more services hosted in the cloud, it is vital to protect against cyberattacks: two-thirds of the companies consulted by Deloitte said they were already doing so.
