Insurance carriers developing mobile capabilities need to focus on agents as well as customers

The under-30 generation expects “highly personalized service” over smart phones and they need help with insurance buying decisions, but property and casualty carriers who focus their mobile computing efforts more on customers than on agents are making a mistake, suggests a recent from Aite Group LLC.

“As part of Aite Group’s 2013 survey of 45 insurance IT executives, our discussions with numerous carriers indicate a trend in carriers’ plans to spend to achieve ‘stellar’ consumer mobile and tablet capabilities, yet fewer of these insurers plan to spend to maintain ‘stellar’ agent mobile and tablet capabilities,” wrote Pat Speer, an analyst for Boston-based Aite Group, which provides research and consulting on the financial services sector.  “P&C insurers will focus more in 2014 on mobile capabilities for customers and less on those for their agents, and they will find that this is a mistake.” 

Although smartphones have become “the preferred computing and communications system for younger policyholders, who bring high expectations for fast, efficient and highly personalized customer service,” those of Generation Y — born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s — are “no more insurance savvy than other generations,” wrote Speer.

Speer made her comments in an Aite Group Impact Note — titled Top 10 Trends in Insurance, 2014: Becoming More Customer-Centric, published last month. Of the 10 trends identified by Aite Group, one was that Generation Y “shifts the mobile strategies” for P&C carriers.

“In 2014, P/C insurers will find that they have a disconnect in their mobile strategies — they are not including enough touch points for their independent or captive agents to maximize the value that they can provide to their customers, Gen Y and otherwise,” Speer wrote. “These touch points are critical to help them with their insurance-related questions and decisions.”

Another trend Speer wrote about was on usage-based insurance.

Many P&C executives facing “the possibility of adverse selection” in auto insurance want to have the ability to “monitor customer driving behavior and offer competitive discounts as soon as possible.”

But with usage-based auto insurance, many customers have privacy concerns, so “insurers need to first build trust through value-added services through which the insurer can help the consumer with important safety challenges while demonstrating that it will not misuse consumers’ driving data.” Usage-based insurance programs targetting teen drivers “are a good place to start,” added Speer.