I’ve been a little quiet of late, to make way for my erstwhile colleagues to expound their views on much more serious topics.
So, being the more geeky amongst AT8, I thought it time to return to something more technological.
In our travels we still see the vast majority of Ecommerce systems being deployed to a professional insurance community – this hasn’t changed for a long time. Product Providers over the years have had to flex their own internal systems and expose them to their channels to market and some do it better than others.
There are some changes afoot – the first is the move of the Providers to expose their core systems via a messaging interface rather than providing the screen interaction; this allows the solution vendors to control the the user experience and make the process much more seamless. In this way, all the adviser needs to do is to learn the solution they’ve purchased and allow the data to be integrated with the business process. This approach has been particularly successful with policy valuations, with realtime requests being supported by the key back office solution vendors. In terms of new business, the situation is little more complex, as, although the portals capture the majority of the quotations’ activity, applications still tend to be submitted via Provider extranets with the Provider controlling the screen dialogue.
So, that is good, but it’s still only satisfying the adviser – what about the consumer either via the adviser or direct to the insurer. It is here the level of user interaction needs to move to a different level. In the Personal Lines space, web aggregators are becoming a significant method of product distribution – services that capture the inexperienced user and move them through to closing a piece of business. What is needed is good and captivating solutions made for the Facebook generation. We have seen a very good example of this by a leading solution provider, using some very advanced technology – an approach that ‘brings alive’ the sales and guidance process and it certainly does turn heads.
Now, whether that satisfies the title of this piece, I’m not sure, but in terms of creating a technology environment that attempts to shake off the prolific use of Financial Services techno-babble must be making a start!
