Dissatisfied Customers Pose Major Risk to Future Insurance Premiums

As more P&C insurers offer insureds the opportunity to file claims online, insureds have come to expect a speedy and seamless claims experience.

With claims on the rise and becoming more severe, P&C carriers are at risk of losing future premiums as a result of customer dissatisfaction with operational inefficiencies around claims handling.

For decades, Auriemma Roundtables has connected consumer finance companies with the right people and data to help them optimize operations, maximize efficiency, and navigate industry complexity. Now, Auriemma Roundtables is offering claims executives the opportunity to participate in a P&C industry business intelligence network that addresses the challenges facing insurers today.

To build these Roundtable communities, Auriemma Roundtables is working with three P&C industry knowledge experts:

What keeps P&C claims executives up at night?

A 2022 Accenture survey of US insurers that reported “rising claims dissatisfaction is putting $170 billion in P&C premiums at risk.”

According to Patrick Kelahan (The Insurance Elephant), if a claim is not settled in a month, customer dissatisfaction rises to 30%, putting the insured’s future premiums at risk.

“Even if insurance execs realize there is a deficiency in their use of technology, the issue comes down to whether insurers’ customer-facing staff have integration and training programs to keep pace with technology innovation and whether customer education initiatives is helping customers leverage service technology,” said Kelahan.

The need for speed in settling insurance claims

Other factors can also drive claims dissatisfaction, according to Kelahan. Key dissatisfiers include clunky claim capture and lack of digital servicing tools.

• Inadequate capture of claims. While customers are generating claims on their insurance company’s website, not enough information is collected, creating a ripple down effect of unnecessary calls between the customer and agent. This defeats the benefit of customer-generated claims.

• The customer gets lost in the claims information shuffle. While insureds want to digitally connect with their insurers, customers still rely on phone-based insurance agents for support. Since status of claims investigations are not currently online , insurance agents do not always have the same access to the information being shared with the insureds. This can lead to miscommunication between the customer and the insurance agent.

• AI and machine learning models still need to mature. While many organizations are adding customer-friendly applications such as chat bots, rich text messaging, and guided scripting, many insurance companies’ AI models haven’t had sufficient analysis experience for machine learning to produce accurate outcomes compared to humans. The models will need to mature more fully in order to truly improve the claim settlement process.

• Virtual estimates are powerful tools but still lack the ability to provide a comprehensive claims resolution to customer. Virtual estimating methods are effective in providing a settlement, but they are not comprehensive enough in damage capture. If there are issues with the original settlement, resolution often cannot be handled virtually, creating more delays and resulting is dissatisfaction.

In the end, the insurance business is all about paying claims.

“From my experience in insurance, claims people are all well-intentioned,” said Bryan Falchuk (author of The Future of Insurance). “They want to pay claims and help insureds get back on their feet again. With all the constraints and headwinds facing claims operations today, the interface between tech, employees, and customers can be difficult to navigate. The best way to solve these problems is to build a community of experts and explore workable solutions.”

About the Auriemma P&C Claim Operations & Innovation Roundtable

For more than 30 years, Auriemma Roundtables has partnered with our member companies to use collaboration, data, and research to unlock insights and standards that improve industry performance.

Auriemma Roundtables’ new P&C Insurance Claims Operations and Innovation group focuses on best practices to offer best-in-class customer experiences at all touch points.

Membership includes:

• Meetings for claims executives
• Industry-leading operational benchmarking
• Custom peer group surveys

“With all the tech disruption in claims operations today, there is no one right answer and no one individual with all the answers,” said David Gritz (InsurTech New York). “The most effective way to learn what works and what does not is to share experiences with other P&C claims executives and build a community of peers where innovative ideas can bubble up.”

Indeed, when the right people get together, magic happens.

To learn more about Auriemma’s new Claims Operations & Innovation Roundtable, contact Phylip Jones,  Head of Business Development, Auriemma Roundtables at (646) 343-4415 or (pjones@roundtables.us)