The world is transforming rapidly, with a new world seemingly defined every day. Insurers’ strategies are increasingly focused on ‘insuring the future’ – in turn ensuring their own sustainability – and loss adjusters have a key role to play in enabling that vision.
Meeting the evolving needs of customers in a connected world is critical. Millennials and younger generations will insure differently to those before them. They won’t, for example, own as many assets or need the same certainty as older generations. Instead, they want responsiveness, connectivity, immediacy and insurance solutions that fit with their more mobile, digital lifestyles. Meanwhile, the insurance industry faces growing competition from disruptors including data-rich conglomerates like Amazon and Google.
Against this backdrop, insurers are rightly obsessed with ensuring the customer claim journey is a key differentiator, from first notification to assessment of policy coverage, mitigation, fulfilment and repair. The customer of the future demands more choice, faster outcomes and a seamless and more automated digital claims experience. Many insurers have created procurement and vendor management teams dedicated to monitoring performance and driving continuous improvement to ensuring their customers get just that.
Adjusters’ value propositions and expert verticals must align with the underwriting and distribution needs of their clients and brokers. They are, after all, an extension of the insurer’s brand and there for them at the ‘moment of truth’ when their claims promise is met.
Technology creates opportunities for the claims industry to automate many processes, self-disrupt and bring new ideas and solutions to market, such as Crawford’s Digital Assist, Asservio, WeGoLook and YouGoLook – all of which improve the claim journey for the end customer.
As well as innovating to provide a more responsive claims services, adjusters must also increasingly leverage their internal data to generate insights that can help clients, brokers and carriers mitigate risks, match capital to risk and underwrite more effectively. Adjusters will increasingly need to evidence success – and the value they offer client – in metrics such as claim cost reduction, claim file life, the cost of handling claims and indemnity spend.
While the claims journey of the future will be increasingly automated, digital and data-driven, human adjusting skills, experience and empathy also remain essential. Customer service standards and expectations continue to rise, and the voice of the customer is heard through many channels, from social media to net promoter score surveys.
Adjusters will have to evidence compliance and reporting and prove their businesses meet customers’ rising ethical and environmental expectations – all of which will become increasingly important criterion for insurers when choosing a claims partner.
The need to meet these expectations has been accelerated by the pandemic, which has brought a host of new remote digital solutions to the market while awareness of ESG continues to rise up corporate and consumer agendas.
The big question for adjusters today is how to work with clients on agreeing what is required to achieve the right customer outcomes. This requires a true understanding of the client’s strategy and how they intend to grow and respond to market challenges. Central to all of this is a relentless pursuit for service excellence enabled through the right mindsets and behaviours of our people – our greatest assets.
