The 2024 insurance shift: Power up your strategy with customer engagement

The latest Insurance Outlook Report released by Deloitte revealed some macro trends that are affecting the industry profoundly in 2024. 

A confluence of contributing factors throughout recent years are at play - ranging from the escalating frequency and severity of global risks like climate change and cybercrime, along with ever changing customer expectations and technological advancements.

In 2024, this evolution is intensifying focus on the insurance industry’s capacity and readiness to react as society’s “financial safety nets”. Alongside growing expectations for a more personalised, transparent and digitised insurance experience, this pressure is requiring the insurance industry to step up to the challenge, evolve fast and embrace their potential to achieve greater social good all over the world. 

‍

As we delve into the future of the insurance industry, it's becoming increasingly clear that proactive communication and customer engagement will be a key driver of success for insurers. Here's why:

Prevention > Cure 

The evolving operating environment should put even more pressure on insurers across sectors to invest in and accelerate their core digital transformation in the year ahead, leveraging the benefits provided by automation, AI and advanced analytics. These capabilities could be the foundation for insurers to adapt to the complexities of the quickly changing environment and elevate their purpose.

Advanced technology capabilities can help achieve operational targets such as improved underwriting for more accurate pricing and risk selection, bolstering claims management to limit loss costs, and improving efficiency by streamlining operations. They could also advance longer-term goals such as proactively helping clients mitigate or eliminate risks before they even occur, promoting personalised coverage and services to strengthen customer relationships, and making outreach to underserved segments more efficient and effective.

With a next-gen Customer Engagement Platform like Pendula, these kinds of proactive communications can be automated, looping in internal and external data sources like the weather bureau to provide tailored and dynamic two-way conversations at scale. 

Customer-centric transformation

To embrace this proactive stance, insurers are pivoting toward a more customer-centric business model - with advanced technology adoption also playing a pivotal role. 

Leveraging data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to gain real-time insights into risk assessment allows providers to deliver personalised guidance, proactive warnings tailored to policyholders. Not only does this help prevent potential risks, but enhances the customer experience too and elevates the brand into a trusted guardian of society. 

However, this transition is not just about technology; it also requires a cultural shift within insurance companies. Siloed interactions and rigid internal structures are giving way to enhanced collaboration among employees. Cross-functional teams are working together to ensure that information flows seamlessly, and the accessibility of customer data is maximised between everybody in the organisation. 

‍

A must-have not a nice-to-have

Nobody can deny that 2023 could be named the year that AI evolved from supporting actor to main star. 

The original promise was to improve employee productivity, speed up decision-making, and reduce costs, however it could also be a significant disruptor to customer experience. Insurance companies must look to invest further in AI as part of their 2024 to 2025 roadmaps. 

Coupling AI with advanced analytics can potentially provide a more complete, real-time picture of insurance customers, including their actions and sentiments. Such insights can be leveraged to target customers with offers, advice, or services most relevant to them at moments that matter most to them.

Purpose-driven ambassadors for social good

2024 is poised to be a tipping point for the sector as the world becomes increasingly digitised and customer and agent expectations for more relevant and holistic product offerings and ease of doing business continue to escalate. 

Carriers are now considering what should be transformed to meet these demands as well as provide greater cushion from external market pressures.

This shift may be challenging, as many carriers continue to struggle with networks of legacy systems and siloed lines of business, products, processes, and culture. However, these obstacles are not expected to be insurmountable.

Cutting-edge technology, including Customer Engagement Platforms that leverage advanced analytics, could help empower life insurers and their agents to shift away from a transactional role to broader relationship-based consumer interactions. 

Proactive communication is at the core of this required transformation, enabling insurers to enhance the customer experience, build trust and offer personalised content which will benefit and educate society as a whole, for a better and more secure future.

Start a conversation with Pendula

If you're ready to step up your customer engagement strategies, we’re here with the solution. Talk to an expert about how Pendula can make a difference to your customer retention and loyalty.