Don’t Listen to Everything if You Want to Hear Something!

In a 2011 report titled Using Social Data in Claims and Underwriting: Creating a Social Risk Profile, Celent looked at how insurers could leverage social networks to do a better job in claims and underwriting. Since then, we have been looking at vendors who can complement insurers internal data with external data sources including social media data and this in the frame of different applications that go beyond underwriting and claims. We notably have profiled and will continue to profile vendors active in the predictive analytics space and for which data sources are as important if not more important than pure features and functions they offer as part of their system.
Using social media data in insurance has become more important over the past few years and what can be called now Social Media Intelligence goes beyond a simple technology that taps in all sorts of social network data sources. Indeed for many people social media intelligence or what people also call social media listening purely consists in screening social networks to get data that can complement internal data to make a better business decision. Actually this definition is too succinct and does not include all key phases a proper social media intelligence strategy should include:

So we define social media intelligence as the strategy consisting in:

1. Defining strategic objectives that are dependent not only on internal but external data,
2. Defining a referential or a group of topics, relevant social media platforms as well as a geographic and language scope to be considered for the analysis,
3. Filtering and analyzing social media data regularly (real time, daily, monthly but it is generally a continuous process)
4. Implementing an action plan leveraging findings derived from the data analysis to achieve the strategic objectives initially defined.

We think insurers can learn from project and use cases other industries have gone for in the Social Media Intelligence space and we are interested to better understand how these examples can generate fruitful ideas for insurers. Stay tuned as Celent will be covering this topic in more details in the near future.

from Celent Insurance Blog http://ift.tt/215Nv2v
via IFTTT

Blockchain in Insurance…ARGH…Who Needs It, Anyway?

Interesting feedback from Celent’s What If… Conference in London last week. We were fortunate to have both @leanne_kemp and @pascalbouvier present on blockchain in insurance. Surprisingly, the extensive treatment of the subject received mixed reviews. Some attendees were pleased and stated that discussing blockchain was valuable and that these conversations, in insurance, are rare and are just beginning to take place. Others felt that the time could have been better used reviewing a subject which has more relevance to insurance. It was mentioned that the technology was for payments, banking, and securities trading.

The comments reminded me of the early 2000s, when online retailing began to impact business. I recall insurance industry veterans’ comments about the opportunities for the internet. Summarizing generally, it was something like: “Well, it is a great way to sell plane tickets and books, but it won’t catch on in insurance. Insurance is different.” We see how that has worked out.

In 2014, our Celent colleague, @Zil_Bareisis, positioned blockchain this way in his report, The Disruptive Potential of Bitcoin: Why Everyone in Financial Services Should Care: “Just like HTTP became a protocol for information exchange, Bitcoin, Ripple, and other decentralized ledger-based solutions might be seen as the protocols for value exchange, promising exciting possibilities, some of which are difficult to imagine at this stage.”

However, evidently there are insurers that are not only paying attention, but are investing significantly. Allianz announced work with six startup companies in their accelerator in Nice, France (http://ift.tt/1LTFZ2o). Also, just this week, AXA made public their USD$55million investment in a blockchain technology company (http://ift.tt/1TmeSVq ).

So, is this the “new internet”? Without a doubt, there are huge challenges to blockchain in insurance. The technology still requires maturation around scalability and latency. Additionally, regulatory aspects are yet to be determined. However, it is clear that, right now, some insurers are placing some hefty bets and others can’t even find the casino.

from Celent Insurance Blog http://ift.tt/1Qk3qEk
via IFTTT

Rethinking The Role of the Intercap

The trend-naming fashion of capital letters in the middle of words continues. I believe those “InterCaps”—also known as “BumpyCaps” and “CamelCaps”—are mostly a marketing trick intended to make terms sound important. I find them annoying.

The hot example of late is FinTech. Plus its close cousins, BankTech, InsurTech, and RegTech. They’re popping up everywhere, including within the hallowed halls of Celent. We are all guilty of putting a new veneer on something that has been around for ages.

What does that capital T in Tech imply, and why do the terms get such rapt attention? Is applying technology to the business of financial services new, and more worthy of our attention today than it was years ago? Is how we manage new technology fundamentally changed? I don’t think so.

Maybe the point is to let us collectively off the hook for pursuing technology change so casually (was that it?) for the last 50 years. I can imagine the bank or insurance CIO, late in his/her career, saying, “Hey, if we had FinTech 30 years ago, this place might look a damn sight different by now!” Right, that’s what we were missing: Technology startups! Youngsters in hoodies!

The truth behind technology and the financial services industry requires no such defense. Changing the world through application of technology didn’t depend on the arrival of startling new tools, or dorm room genius, as helpful as those might be in today’s world. It required a risk/reward shift. As an industry, we didn’t change because we didn’t have to. Our existence was not threatened by new consumer behaviors. Our livelihoods were not at risk from upstart competitors. We took a hard look at the costs and benefits of new technology, and behaved accordingly. Which meant…changing…slowly.

But something is certainly different today. I believe that existential threats are emerging for our industry. We are now at risk. I’m firmly convinced that relationships between consumers and their financial providers are changing, with the industry’s participation or without it. There is a new dynamism, and it is clear that the entire ecosystem is feeling the impact.

Instead of looking at FinTech and all the other Techs with an annoyed editor’s eye, maybe I should embrace the way intercaps communicate something important. They’re a stylistic irritation. But they’re also a visual cue that helps us rethink technology. And that is sorely needed in these times of powerful disruption.

from Celent Insurance Blog http://ift.tt/1o0hUU6
via IFTTT

Well sir, we’re not Amazon: online support lessons for insurers

I just got off the phone from a 40 minute phone call with an insurer that provides benefits to my family. I won’t name the company, as that is not the point of this blog post, but I thought I would share my experience. I am certainly hopeful that this could not happen at any of the companies for which our readers work.

The same insurer handles my Group life and Dental coverages. It is a well-known company. I had previously registered for their website, so I logged on to print my new dental card, so I could get all seven of us to the dentist. When I logged on, it only showed my Life coverage, but not dental. Nothing on the site let me add it, so I resorted to the next best thing.

I called.

The wait was about what I expect – about 10 minutes – before they actually connected me to a person. After providing my entire life history (or at least it felt that way), to validate I am who I am, the customer service rep banged away at her keyboard for a solid 5 minutes before declaring that she could not send me id cards – that my account did not allow it. Getting beyond the fact that this is simply silly, she transferred me to web support.

Back in the queue for another 10 minute wait, I finally spoke to a helpful gentleman who could set me up to access my dental account.

Except he couldn’t.

First, he explained that I had to have a second web account to view Dental. Apparently the siloed nature of their organization spilled over to their customers (Strike one). Then after being on hold for another 5 minutes, he came back to let me know that he could not set me up because my employer did not allow us to have an online account. Even when assured that my colleague DID have allow web accounts, he stuck with his guns. I tried, repeatedly, to convince him that my company would not have made that decision (Strike two).

I finally gave up, ended the call and emailed our internal benefits coordinator. She responded that all I had to do was register for the site again, using a second email address. Naturally, this worked, contrary to what the insurer repeatedly told me (Strike three).

Now, why did I title the blog as I did?

Because my experiences with my insurer are not unique. I recently had trouble returning an online order from a major big box home improvement store. They wanted everything short of my first born to allow me to return a defective product. I had to jump through many hoops and take the product back to their local store. To make it worse, they wouldn’t be able to replace it. I’d have to order it again, and, by the way, the price went up $120.

During that call, I commented that their service was complicated and poor and paled in comparison to Amazon.

To which he replied: “Well sir, we’re not Amazon.”

No, no you’re not. And I haven’t ordered anything else from them either, but Amazon gets my business regularly.

The moral of the story? Oh there are so many:

– Don’t show your organizational weaknesses to the customer. You may be siloed, but that shouldn’t make it difficult for the customer.
– Make sure your support people actually know what they’re doing. The solution set should not include “making something up so the customer will go away.”
– Customers expect your service to equal those of other providers. Admitting that you’re not Amazon just reinforces this notion.

I could go on and on, but it is a lesson the insurance industry needs to learn. We lag behind virtually every other industry in online support.

Now I don’t want to leave on a negative note, because there are insurers in our industry that excel at online support. My auto insurer is wonderful.

What’s a bit ironic is that once I got setup on the two almost identical websites for this insurer, the web experience is wonderful.

from Celent Insurance Blog http://ift.tt/1PQnwMC
via IFTTT