The impact of 2021 on the insurance industry
David Martin, Head of Retail, discusses the impact 2021 had on the insurance industry with Insurance Business Magazine.
How does 2021 measure up to 2020 in terms of its disruption to the insurance market?
It’s been great to see the rhythm across the market stabilise in the last year, coupled with much stronger interaction and negotiation. As a business we’re genuinely customer obsessed, and we continue to invest in our capabilities to ensure we provide great propositions and a responsive service to our brokers. We’ve seen continued increases in our NPS scores from +59 in H1 2020 to +76 in 2021. I’m proud to say that for four out of five new business submissions, we’ve managed to call brokers within two hours.
Delivering stability through turbulent times has been a cornerstone of our success in 2021 as we strive to deliver security and peace of mind to our customers. In 2021 this has resulted in driving innovative digital deployments that are designed and centred on the customer. They have been executed at pace and without compromise, despite the challenges of the current market.
What have been some of your key standout moments of the last year?
Last year, underwriting capacity and availability were difficult to access. Despite this, we continued to introduce innovative ways to ensure solutions were available. This includes our new digital quote management system which reduced the amount of time it takes to get quotes out to market by half, and we continued to provide significant capacity when it was needed most. Despite challenging times, we were still able to support our customers and remained trading in the market throughout lockdown.
Sustainability has quite rightly been prominent on every business agenda in the last year. Launching initiatives such as repair not replace for our customers alongside green car parts in motor claims through a three-year contract with SYNETIQ have been key for us.
Innovation and digitisation really centred around customer centric solutions and certainty of outcome. For example, Zurich cut property claims settlement times to under 24 hours with the introduction of Sprout.ai technology which delivers automated policy checking. The innovation, which is driven by Zurich’s handlers, surfaces and adds layers of context (including a market-leading comparison against the Ombudsman database) in a simple format to aid decision making. Claims can be intelligently triaged and processed within a matter of hours with above 98% accuracy on policy checking.
We also saw the continued success of our award-winning Zurich Support Services which provides up to five free counselling sessions to claimants and their families. This has played a pivotal role for our customers, particularly during these times of extreme weather conditions such as the summer flash floods.
What key lessons from the last 12 months do you think will remain applicable to the approaching new year?
Keeping customers at the centre of everything we do will always be a priority for our business and we will never stop working on this. Equally, digital innovation must continue to drive sustainable propositions and solutions. This will ensure we provide a service which drives us forward in our sustainability journey as a business, whilst offering customers a service which matches their personal values.
Stability and confidence of delivery remain key in building long term relationships, and we will continue delivering greater data insight at all points of the journey to ensure we protect customer outcomes and meet their expectations.
If you were in the habit of making predictions – what do you think waits for the insurance market in 2022?
Sustainability was at the forefront of the insurance industry’s agenda in 2021 - this is a trend that will quite rightly continue in the next 12 months at a far greater pace. This doesn’t always have to be about huge strategic changes. If we all think in terms of the smaller immediate adjustments, it will help to shift the dial.
Digital innovation will continue to open new markets for us which in turn brings new risks and exposures. This will require adaptation and agility from the industry in the coming months to service the business effectively. It will also need further investment in our technical and leadership capabilities to ensure we can continue to provide innovative solutions in a challenging risk environment. In a market that has seen high levels of consolidation and change, it’s our ability to remain flexible and open to change, driven by the commitment to doing the right thing that will make the difference in 2022.
