Infosys: Insurance Must Take Customer-Centric Approach to Technology

By David Delony
Contributing Writer

A new survey by Infosys (News - Alert) has found that insurance companies need to pay more attention to the customer experience as they improve their digital strategies.

"While many insurance companies have developed effective ways to leverage digital technologies to engage with customers, too many are not putting the customer experience at the heart of their strategy,” Manish Tandon, executive vice president and head of healthcare, insurance and life sciences at Infosys, said. “This technology led, ad hoc approach to digital will not work. Best practices in insurance and examples from sectors such as retail consistently show that being laser focused on customers, and using analytics to develop a deep understanding of customers, are the most important factors in getting digital right."

The consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services company surveyed 200 insurance IT decision-makers in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany with the help of Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting.

Even though the insurance industry has a very conservative reputation, IT people at these companies seem to be very forward-looking, given their responses. Forty-seven percent of them said that digital technology plays a major role in the growth of their companies and 44 percent said it could drive a unified customer experience.

They were also quick to see the advantage of new technologies. A full 44 percent of them saw digital self-service as a way to increase revenue growth and improve customer service. They also saw the advantage of Big Data, with 29 percent saying that it would improve their businesses by improving underwriting. Another one-fifth said that the Internet of Things would improve bill payment, policy administration and agent management.

Twenty-five percent also said that digital marketing could drive new business.

The results aren’t always so good. Sixty percent of the respondents said their companies were hampered by poor quality insights.

There also seems to be a lack of long-term planning in IT procurement, with 65 percent saying that their companies’ technology portfolios are acquired on an ad-hoc basis. This seems to hurt these companies in other ways. Half of them said that the lack of a digital innovation strategy hurt digital marketing initiatives, and a further 25 percent said their companies lacked the right skills.