Insurance industry needs to ‘keep up’ with evolving customer demands amid digital shift – Aviva

Insurance firms need to prioritise “keeping up” with the evolving demands of consumers as they become more comfortable using digital platforms.

That was according to Aviva’s head of customer experience and insight Ellie Shepherd, who said the shift to digital “really changed” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For example, it was noted that the pandemic had fast-tracked touchless claims – a claim filed with very little contact from a human via an app – during a roundtable hosted by Future Processing last week (7 June 2023).

Bill Brower, vice president of industry relations at Solera, explained that prior to the pandemic, consumer adoption for touchless claims was “pretty slow” with a 10% uptake.

However, he said lockdowns made this type of claims processing a necessity.

Speaking to Insurance Times, Shepherd said the “pandemic changed everything for customers”.

“So, as an insurance industry, it’s really important that we keep up with the consumers expectations [and] their needs,” she said.

“The digital shift really changed through the pandemic, so customers [have become] more comfortable and confident with using digital [platforms].

“Therefore it is [up to] us [to make] sure that we keep up with that, but also making sure our products are really relevant for customers.

“We need to make sure that our products are suitable for customers and that they can contact us in a way that suits this new normal, as it gets described following the pandemic.”

Traditional support?

However, Shepherd explained that for the insurance industry to adapt to the digital transformation and meet customer experience expectations, firms had to also understand and cater to different “customer cohorts”.

She felt this could be achieved by understanding when a digital approach was suitable for certain products, with some customer groups not as digitally advanced as others.

“Digital does need to be considered in a really customer centric sense, which is where and how does digital make sense for customers,” she added.

“We need to try and make sure we’re there at the points when it does matter, with enough information for them which ideally we would offer to them digitally.

“But, sometimes we do need to provide some more traditional support methods as well”.