Improving the payments experience in insurance
Globally, insurtech companies raised $14.1 billion across 633 deals last year, according to Pitchbook’s 2021 Annual Insurtech Report.
Looking to the future, while insurtech remains a small proportion of fintech, it will grow in similar directions.
In IBSi’s Fintech Journal – April edition – our CEO, Phil McGriskin, shares how improving the payments experience is crucial in that change:
“I think in terms of payments, the simple answer is more of the excellent and almost invisible experiences payment customers enjoy elsewhere will be seen in insurance. Lots of businesses outside insurance have seamless payment processes, and swathes of choice for the consumer. These have been slower to arrive in insurance – both for how people pay, and perhaps more importantly the old adage about claims being an insurer’s shop window – how people are paid when the inevitable occurs.”
“The broad theme of digitisation will continue to be strong,” says McGriskin. “Over the last couple of years, it has been necessary for nearly all businesses to digitise in some way. The insurance industry was no different. Digitisation within insurance occurred at varying speeds and with varying degrees of early success but the net effect of reduction in costs and overheads and improvement in customer outcomes has been very clear. And so have the winners. Some businesses have excelled in their digitisation strategies and execution and those businesses are starting to operate more efficiently. Others have not. I expect that those others, who have been slower with their efforts, will speed up their own digitisation to remain relevant and competitive.”
When it comes to payments in the parametric space, Phil says, “Although not necessarily new, the increase in the availability of information about events – ranging from the conditions in a specific packaging area of a single truck moving cross country to the exact level of precipitation or wind in a field somewhere (anywhere) in the world – means it’s now possible to define and rate a policy and pay a claim, all completed within a digital (real-time) flow.”
To read the full article, visit the IBS Intelligence website.
Find out how we’re improving payments here.
