The winds of change are driven by people. As their lives change,insurers adapt.

Related: The direction of insurance in 2017: It's all aboutconvergence

When it comes to the customer experience, group insurancecarriers are pulled in multiple directions because they areconcerned with so many layers of customers. Is it possible to meeteveryone's experience expectations — the partner, the brokers, theemployer's HR team and the thousands of employees?

The answer is most certainly, "Yes."

There has never been a better time technologically to capture growth through experience management.Insurers can pay attention to these four customer trends inparticular.

No. 4: Portals for brokers, employers and employees

Increasingly, paper enrollments are becoming less common, evenat the worksite. As technology becomes more pervasive, withnearly every employee having at least a smartphone, activitiesranging from enrollment to claims submission are increasinglyhappening electronically.

However, carriers need to be capable of supporting this.Having the right portal, with a responsive,mobile first design, that is built around well-thought-out journeymaps, is critical, supported by a modern back-end system thatsupports real-time processing.

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Having the right portal, with a responsive, mobile first design,that is built around well-thought-out journey maps, is critical fortoday's insurance business. (Photo: iStock)

No. 3: User experience

Millennials are now employees, employers, home office staff andhave much, much different expectations for user experience. They'vegrown up in a world where UX has been defined by Apple, Amazon, andGoogle and expect that our systems are built to those standards,not that our systems are merely an improvement over legacysystems.

No. 2: Customer engagement via wellness/gamification

Getting customers engaged can help improve cross-selling. This can be achieved in partwith gamification and wellness solutions. Examples of this includeLife.io and Human API, both of which can provide access to datafrom wearables. Life.io can allow participants to earn rewards,achieve goals, etc., but tied back to employee benefits. Thisengages customers and helps to build the brand.

No. 1: Improved underwriting through technology

Underwriting, either at a group level or at an individual levelfor small groups, can be significantly improved using technology.Technology to improve underwriting ranges from tools such as ForceDiagnostics' rapid health exams, to cognitive analysis of censusdata (e.g., Watson), to leveraging analytics to better evaluateexperience rating.

These market trends, as well as others, ensure that groupbenefits providers will stay busy for a long time to come. Equallyimportant, they mean that the distance between carriers that havemodernized and those that haven't will grow rapidly, and that thosethat haven't will be challenged to win new customers, and could besubject to adverse selection.

Modernizing has never been more important, and it has neverrequired doing more to get there! What is certain is that groupbenefits providers that haven't started on a course of change needto hoist their sails and catch the wind while it's blowing inopportunity's direction.

Chad Hersh is executive vice president at Majesco. To reachhim: [email protected].

This blog published first at Majesco.com. The opinions expressed here arethe writer's own.

See also:

Digital transformation can help insurers keepcustomers loyal

Insurers still coming up short ondigitalization

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