Changes insurance sector companies have made to continue operating during the COVID-19 outbreak could become permanent or lead to different ways of performing certain tasks, industry sources say.
Users’ increasing comfort with technology such as video conferencing and remote claims inspections could further accelerate adoption across the industry, they say.
“We’ve seen, out of some insurers, an interest in doubling down on digital,” said Mark McLaughlin, global insurance director for IBM in Chicago. He said most of his insurance clients have been proceeding with business largely without incident.
“A segment of people — insurance company workers and buyers, are habituating to digital ways of doing work — and it’s been a pleasant surprise for a lot of people,” Mr. McLaughlin said.
Many note the smoothness of the transition to doing business remotely.
“All of my team is completely functional providing quotes, binders and policies — all from their homes,” said Michele Sansone, president, North America property, at Axa XL in New York.
Virtual operations have held up well so far for Twane Duckworth, chief of risk management for the city of Jacksonville, Florida, who said his broker, Brown & Brown Inc., has been in continual contact.
“My broker has been absolutely accessible,” said Mr. Duckworth, who is also a member of the Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. board of directors. “In fact, they have been constantly checking in. They have been wonderful, and it’s absolutely been not a concern for me.”
While technology has been a stopgap in many cases, and may continue to be used for certain government meetings moving forward, Jacksonville City Council meetings, on the other hand, will likely return to being held in public to comply with Florida’s public access or “sunshine laws,” Mr. Duckworth said. Video conferencing was used during the shutdown to maintain transparency, he said.
Some say the shift to remote work and the increased use of digital technology could lead to major changes in the insurance industry.
“This is going to change the way this industry conducts itself post COVID-19,” said Kenneth Tolson, U.S. president of claims solutions at Atlanta-based Crawford & Co. “It will not just bounce back to the way it was without a doubt.”
“This will have a lasting effect on our business. Where before we may have defaulted to a physical inspection of a property, we may now default to a self-service inspection,” he said.
“As an industry, we may not look back to where we were in terms of physical inspection, site inspection in the same way,” said Mark R. Evans, head of energy, property, construction claims for the Americas, Axa XL. “We may see a whole cadre of claims we can administer remotely — a larger volume than we could before.”
The new ways of doing business could create opportunities for some, said Matt Adams, New York-based U.S. insurance practice leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
“We are seeing companies take on and embrace new ways of working,” Mr. Adams said. “As the pandemic does reveal gaps in operations, operating models might be improved through new and unexpected partnerships with insurtech enterprises that focus more on the customer services and the customer experience. Perhaps there’s more motivation now for those partnerships to be formed.”
“Many companies in this space had already been prioritizing various forms of digital transformation, and for those companies that started on this path of digital transformation, it’s accelerating their investment and project plans,” Mr. Adams said. “It was an unexpected confirmation that for the most part, this can be done.”
Insurers came into the crisis in various stages of readiness, Mr. McLaughlin said.
“Insurers which are past the basics, those firms that are already thinking digital, are going to extend their leads,” he said.
Considerations over such changes have led insurers and allied trades to reconsider their schedules for returning to work, said Julia Lamm, PwC’s New York-based financial services workforce strategy leader.
“If we’re going to rethink our ways of working and we’re going to embrace more remote work in the long term, then what is the short-term plan for bringing people back,” Ms. Lamm said clients have been asking. In some cases, their original time-tables have “slipped” as they consider strategic long-term changes, she said.
Another question, Ms. Lamm said, is what does going back look like? It may largely be people wearing masks and socially distancing, and include only a portion of the workforce or rotating teams, she said, adding that most clients’ first phase involves some 10% to 15%
of employees.
