LexisNexis Home Prefill addresses a thorn in the home business’ side as it speeds up the underwriting process
LexisNexis Risk Solutions has launched its first home insurance application prefill solution.
In a bid to streamline and ease the home application process on customers, who have been known to answer up to 70 questions, LexisNexis hopes to speed up the process, cut dropout rates and improve rating inputs for quotes.
A study back in March found that 85% of homeowners want the application process to be shorter, and according to director of home insurance, Jay Borkakoti (pictured), LexisNexis Home Prefill is a solution to that.
Speaking to Insurance Times, he said: ”When you look at Amazon, their customer journey is world-class, with the speed and the way it is laid out. Insurance is quite far behind, so this is one step on that journey to bring insurance up to that standard of other industries.”
Property attributes
Using property attributes and other data sets to fill in information rather than relying on a customer, possibly incorrectly, the application suggests details about the house which just then needs verification from the customer.
“It has taken 18 months to build this,” Borkakoti continued. “And that is because we obtained all of the information from various sources.”
The information stays up-to-date with quarterly refreshments, so the platform knows if a house has an extension build which gives it more bathrooms or bedrooms.
And if the information suggested by the platform is not correct, the customer has the ability to change the correct the answers.
“We trust the attributes that are being supplied because we have done the work to get the most up-to-date information,” Borkakoti said. “But, as we are providing the platform we hope insurers will use, if there are disagreements on the information provided, it is up to the insurer to ask questions.”
It can be tweaked
Insurers will be able to use the prefill application, but also tweak it to their standards, and allow them to ask more questions if needed.
”Some providers might have another 30 questions, some might only have another 10. But we have launched this to alleviate a pain point for our customers but also for the end user as well.”
The Hood Group will become one of the first companies in the insurance market to use the new data solution, but LexisNexis hopes it is used as the standard across the home market, with the potential to expanding to other lines, such as commercial.
Simon Hood, chief executive at Hood Group, added: “Hood Group and LexisNexis Risk Solutions are leading the way in improving the home insurance process for both the customer’s benefit and for the sector in terms of improved efficiencies.
”It is exciting and a great demonstration of prefilling key pieces of data at that first point of contact, which may have a significant impact on the entire customer journey.”
Hood Group will go live in the next few weeks and LexisNexis says it is in the process of negotiating deals with other insurers.
Development
Borkakoti said the product has potential to be developed further.
”My vision is to build on this. We are amalgamating data sources and providing it to insurers at the point of quote. We want to build on that. We want to create new data sets that can knock more questions out of the process so providers don’t have to ask questions around smoke alarms, for example.”
Borkakoti plans on developing this product as well as creating more products in the coming years.
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