Agile insurers are transforming the industry with prioritizedinitiatives to streamline entire business processes and improve thecustomer experience, directly increasing their top line.

For instance, insurers implementing robust eSignature platformsare seeing efficiencies that directly impact revenue growth andcustomer retention within the first year. One auto insurer saw amore than 15 percent increase in sales and a five percent increasein customer retention within one year of implementing eSignaturesto transact their policies.

Such immediate results demonstrate the necessity for CIOs to beaware of prioritized initiatives among top P&C insurers.Traditionally, State Farm is especially popular in small towns.Now?

“State Farm is sitting at the crossroads of the internet andMain Street,” according to Michael Boyle, former SVP and CIO ofAllstate Financial and Aflac.

Without customer-focused initiatives to improve operations in2013, some insurers may not have a place in the 2014 market. Thefollowing insights detail why.

1. Top Insurers are Investing in Customer ExperienceInitiatives

Traditionally behind other industries with regard to customerexperience, top P&C insurers are prioritizing customerexperience initiatives to change this perception.

Overall, insurers continue the tradition of poor customerexperience ratings, as confirmed in the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings in which the industryscored poorly relative to other industries. No insurer was amongthe top-25 ranked companies, which included grocery stores andonline retailers.

Poor performance relative to other industries is important tonote because insurance customers are not just comparing theirexperience across insurers. They expect the same ease to completetransactions they find when purchasing shoes online withZappos.

A significant opportunity therefore exists for insurers todifferentiate their offerings around an improved customerexperience, particularly with regards to claims.

Traditionally, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process, claimsoperations involve multiple systems, outdated technologies, anddistributed business units. The resulting slow turnaround time isan average 13.9 day lapse between first notice of loss and paymentto auto claimants in fourth quarter 2012.

A claim is a customer's moment of need, an opportunity forinsurers to validate years of premium payments and crucial tocustomer retention. There is a huge push in insurance for web- andmobile-enablement to replace antiquated, legacy systems.

2. Breaking Down Technology Silos Improves CustomerRetention

Poor customer experience can be partly attributed to productsilos within the insurance industry. Different technologies areoften used for home, car, and boat policies. This lack of anintegrated system across products means agents do not have a goodview of their customers.

Hindering an agent's ability to cross-sell products, the lack ofa comprehensive customer view is detrimental to retention. Customerretention increases with each additional policy from a singleinsurer. Effective cross-selling requires access to all relevantcustomer data. Traditionally, requirements related to dataownership have been a roadblock to mobile accessibility.

The most enlightened in the industry are no longer concernedwith a need to have possession of the data, just accessibility toit, according to Ed Higgins, vice president of Thousand IslandsAgency. Moving the data to the cloud was the first step, now agentsneed easy accessibility to the data from their mobile devices.

3. Mobility is the Glue that Holds the Agent-CustomerEcosystem Together

A significant driver for eSignature implementation in theinsurance industry with impressive metrics—and a direct impact oncustomer experience—is improving the mobile agent workflow.Innovative insurance companies are leveraging legally-bindingeSignatures to make it easier and faster for their agents to dobusiness with carriers and customers while on the go.

Walking into an initial meeting toting a printer and fax machineis not putting their best foot forward. Instead, walking into suchenvironments with a tablet containing all necessary documentationand the ability to complete the entire transaction during thatinitial conversation has been proven to increase the signingrate.