A wise person once interrupted one of my questions when I used the term "average insurer." My interview subject responded that, to the best of her knowledge, there was no such thing as an "average insurer."
And how could there be. We have life insurers, health insurers, property & casualty insurers, and reinsurers. And tucked into each of those groups are various lines of insurance that differentiate things such as personal vs. commercial lines and life insurance vs. annuities. To complicate the issue even more, we have different tiers among the insurance carriers—large, medium, and small if you prefer, or Tier 1, Tier 2 or Tier 3 if you are so inclined.
The point here is that diversity abounds in the insurance industry in North America, but what about the rest of the world?
I've written a couple of articles for our website recently. One was based on an interview with Bill Sullivan of Capgemini. The article discussed Capgemini's World Insurance Report 2013 and if you thought there was no such thing as an average insurer in the U.S.A., try to find similarities among the world's varying groups of insurers.
That's not to disparage Sullivan and his report. He has some interesting thoughts drawn from the data he and others from his company collected on the global insurance market.
But one of the general findings from Capgemini was the changing way insurers—across the globe—look at their customers. There's not a company out there that doesn't view itself as being customer centric, but what does that really mean? Companies woo customers because it means revenue, but is the relationship forever changed once money has changed hands? (At least until the renewal date.)
In another report from PwC, which surveyed CEOs from around the globe, a pertinent quote was included from Steve Kandarian, CEO of MetLife: "Every company believes it is customer-centric—after all, if you weren't selling products and services that customers wanted, you would go out of business. But there is a difference between successfully making a sale and being truly customer-centric."
There is no substitute for the human touch when it comes to making customers feel appreciated, but if we've learned anything about technology over the last few decades it's that it is not a replacement for human interaction but rather a way to enhance that relationship.
One of the most significant themes of insurance technology for 2013 and likely beyond is improvement in dealing with customers. Insurers across the globe have discovered that analytics can provide agents and customer service representatives with the information needed to help those customers make wise decisions about their homes, their property, and their lives.
It's nice to see the world agrees on something for a change.
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