According to an industry professional, insurance providers excel in some areas and fall short in others in terms of adapting to our increasingly technological world.
The good news? Insurance professionals have started to use technology more and more in their business environments.
“A lot of agents have not been using technology or they’ve grown up in the time of doing everything manually, rating manually, going to one carrier site and getting rates one at a time, etc. What that plays into is they are looking for stuff to help them better manage their agency, rate their customers faster, manage their customers more effective and efficiently,” explained Laird Rixford, President of Insurance Technologies Corporation. “So through the use of comparative raters and agency management systems, agencies are starting to really excel and grasp technology.”
The bad news? Insurance professionals still fall short in using technology to complete remedial tasks, specifically in relation to marketing.
“A lot of agencies have a great system where they rate, quote and manage their customers but they don’t automate the process of marketing. For example, sending out follow-up emails, referral requests, policy cancellations or renewals, a lot of agencies do these tasks manually,” said Rixford. “There are a lot of systems out there that will automatically send these things out for you. It can be sent via text, email or even do direct mailing.”
In terms of reasons behind the apprehension to adopt these technologies, Rixford speculated it wasn’t simply about the start-up monetary costs but also the time and effort.
With that being said, there is a line between useful technology and over doing it. Although adaptation to mobile technology is essential, creating applications for people to use may cross the line.
“Now getting into creating apps there are a lot of questions out there. We have offered apps in the past, however, there are some discussions now that most people only have 30 apps installed on their mobile devices,” added Rixford. “You only use 15 on a regular basis so what are the chances an insurance app is going to be installed and used on a regular basis.”
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