Online Insurance Distribution system - A win-win for Insurers as well as consumers
Guest post by
Kunal Girishrao Hedau, Senior Associate Consultant, Infosys
It has been for a while now that the Insurance Companies have identified the "Online channel" as one of the dominant lead generation channel as a measure of impacting overall sales. The dominance factor however has not been realized to the level that it should be.
One of such recent study examining consumer shopping and purchase behavior is the "J.D. Power and Associates U.S. Insurance Shopping Study" and it reveals some interesting facts of the consumer online insurance behavior:
- More than half (54 percent) of insurance shoppers report getting their quote online
- Increase in the rate of switching companies among the online insurance shoppers because of the aggressive marketing initiatives undertaken by the Insurers.
The study also finally concluded with the fact that "Online Insurance Quote Applications initiate a majority of policy sales".
While the above study clearly gives us an impression about the recognition and importance of the Online channel, it also goes to imply of the huge business opportunities, if such leads of the online insurance shoppers are followed immediately or in short, importance of closing in on the transition time required from Policy Quote generation to policy issuance.
Noticing this trend, the insurers have realized the importance of making the "Online Sales Portal" available to the consumers.
The Online Sales Portal comprises of an integration of disparate systems to facilitate end to end New Business process flow. The web portal initially captures the customer data to generate a valid quote (electronic as well as print) and then depending upon the customer acceptance, the subsequent process of the Online Insurance Purchase is continued. The customer further enters the required data and proceeds to make payments electronically. The above customer data is then pushed into the policy admin system and a Policy Number and Client Number is returned to the customer along with the printed policy document and payment receipts. Hence the end to end business process comprises of integration of web portal with the Underwriting and Rating Engine, Policy Admin System, Electronic Payment System and a Document Generation System.
The result of the above process for the Insurers is a sale of an online insurance policy by Optimizing End-to-End business process, reducing the turnaround time, delivering effective customer communication in a paperless and cost efficient manner.
On the other hand the consumers also benefit from the Online Sales Portal as it facilitates them with the Product Comparision feature, multiple payment options and reduced documentation or paperless work, comprehensive decision making, time saving and most importantly reduced cost of insurance by avoiding the commissions paid to agents, e-signing their policies, choosing paperless billing as well as the waiver of premium allocation charges incase of some unit linked policies.
Keeping in view the above benefits, it has become notable and decisive for the Insurers to have an End to End solution for addressing Online Insurance channel leveraging the "Best of Breed Products/Systems" to testify a "Win-Win" situation for both the insurers and consumers.
Kindly share your thoughts in case of execution of any such solution offering or implementation experiences.
