U.S. insurance carriers are shifting their focus to revenue growth, profitability and enhancing customer experience while keeping operations costs at an optimum level. In order to increase the customer base and retain the existing customers, carriers are adapting to a customer segment based approach.

Customer expectations are varying widely based on the age, buying power and life stage. For instance, Baby Boomers are looking for in-person contacts to buy retirement/ protection products, while Gen Y is likely to look for an interactive experience online or through social media.

Gen Y segment represents the future customer base that insurance carriers are trying to tap into. Establishing a relationship with Gen Y at early stages of their life offers a large opportunity for insurance carriers throughout the life span of this group. This group of individuals expects insurance products to be bought any time of the day and services to be available round the clock. Having grown up with technology they can’t imagine life without three screens.

Key data points and trends on mobile technology adaptation:

Mobile reaches today’s and tomorrow’s consumer

Once the province of early adopters, mobile is becoming a mass medium
By 2012, mobile penetration to reach 98 percent of U.S. population

Eighty percent of the users are seeing mobile as a tool beyond phone calls.

Smart phones (e.g., iPhones, Android, BlackBerry) penetration currently 25 percent of total U.S. households

Currently skews high among Gen X and Gen Y, business professionals and households with income $50K+
Female head of household adoption rate rapidly on the rise

By 4Q2011, smart phone sales will surpass feature phone sales

In addition to the iPhone apps, BlackBerry and Android are also seeing significant growth

iPhone 200,000 (up from 150,000 in Apr 2010)
Android 50,000 (significant growth anticipated in the market)
BlackBerry 5,000
Over 31 percent of mobile subscribers regularly access the Internet via mobile

Insurance consumers are connected—50 percent of all U.S. insurance policy holders were sophisticated phone users by 4Q2009 (Forrester)

20 percent of consumers state a recent insurance policy purchase decision was affected by the ability to check policy information or pay a bill via mobile phone

Insurance carriers are also changing the behavior to address this segmented market. Gen Y being one of the key segments targeted, carriers spending on mobile strategy and has been increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 18 percent.

Mobile Strategy for Insurance

Insurance carriers continue to have the following operational challenges

Alternative channels for business growth
Cost of service
Dynamic Customer environment
Extensive manual handling
Low usage of self service and
Limited access to information

Mobile channel offers yet another opportunity to address some or all of these challenges. Investing in mobility strategy aligns with insurance carriers’ business strategies and goals

The inevitable evolution of mobile strategy is a convergence of different services on the consumer's mobile device. For instance, services available on the Internet and carrier specific services that directly affect a consumer's risk can come together on a customer's mobile device. We believe that evolving organizations will leverage this convergence to provide integrated services to the consumer. Some potential scenarios are listed below.

Consumers can get an alert on their mobile device, based on their location/travel plans if there are severe weather patterns ahead.
Consumers can be alerted if they are travelling through a high-risk area that is prone for accidents or vehicle thefts.
Consumers will be able to buy Insurance end to end through mobile
Consumers can be alerted on the payments due, or any cash value that they receive or any changes to their account

The key for organizations is to define a mobile strategy that leverages the potential of that convergence and empower the consumer with the right information, tools and products.

Creating and Aligning a Mobile Strategy:

Aligning with speed of evaluation in mobile technology and possibilities this channel offers in future, carriers are investing in mobile strategy focusing on short term quick wins and well as long term goals.

While organizations are innovating new ways to adapt mobile channel with both long term and short term focus, there seems to be no clear demarcation in addressing enterprise vis-à-vis end-consumer needs.

Shorter-term Strategy

Insurance carriers are trying to be ahead of the curve on mobile channel. They are targeting functions/apps that have larger impact on customer experience and hence differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Some of the popular functions that are targeted by carrier for short term are:

Enterprise

Lead Generation
Handheld tools for illustration
Policy status updates
Sales/Commissions tracker
Task assignment and status
Claim status

End customer

Quick Quote
Policy view
Initiate a claim
Location based roadside services
Claim status
Campaigns and marketing

Long-term Strategy

Long-term mobile strategy should be a catalyst for insurance carriers to meet business objectives with respect to increasing revenue, better retention and profitability.

Mobile initiatives must address the following in the long term

Improved Customer awareness and Influence Gen X and Gen Y customers
Increased cross selling/up selling of products
Improve customer loyalty
Competitive premiums in the market place
Reduction in acquisition and service costs and
Flexibility to adopt to new technology trends in the market

Insurance carriers can use mobile services throughout the consumer life cycle, across insurance value chain. We believe the roadmap below represents best the emerging mobile consumer lifecycle

How to Get Help

Infosys has been working with Insurance carriers to create a wide range of Enterprise and end-consumer facing mobile solutions addressing both short and long term strategies. Our proven capabilities are delivering significant value on a wide range of device platforms across service providers. Our proprietary solutions and frameworks enable us to deliver end-to-end mobile solutions to our insurance customers including

Conceptualization
Implementation
Validation solutions and services
Deployment and device management/support

The key enablers that are part of the Infosys Mobility Services for insurance carriers include

A strategic partner ecosystem including service providers, middleware/app providers etc.
Cross-platform application expertise with a growing repository of applications deployed
State-of-the-art app validation labs and automation toolsets
Established and growing IP Portfolio including

Conclusion

The advances in mobility have moved at a breakneck speed. With this level of proliferation, it is becoming increasingly critical for the insurance industry to adopt and embrace the technology to its fullest extent.

A critical first step forward is to focus on defining the right strategy and roadmap for mobile solutions to deliver strategic business objectives. By creating mobile solutions with the right prioritization, roadmap and platform, Insurance carriers can achieve significant growth across a diverse set of distribution channels, reduce cost of service, provide a dynamic and interactive customer experience and increase usage of self-service features with a net result of lower cost of providing information and services.

Special Reports /

Driving Revenue Growth and Improving Customer Experience through Mobile Solutions

Related Stories

Recommended For You