The Year of Real-time Intent Data in Insurance
Having closed out a very successful 2022, I want to thank our customers, partners, and employees for continuing to push the boundaries of what’s possible with insurance digital experiences. I am extremely excited about 2023. In fact, I believe that 2023 will be the year we cross the chasm and become the standard by which all insurance companies understand and act upon their customers’ digital intent.
In short, it will be the year of Real-time Intent Data in insurance.
As I reflect on the major themes and challenges facing the insurance industry today, I can’t help but notice that a number of them are tailwinds for our business.
- Accelerating digital commerce & distribution
- Sky-high user expectations & demand for instant issuance
- Exploding claims and adjustment expenses
- Demanding capital markets prioritizing profitability
- Massive advances in tech and data
- Competitive pressure driving hyper-personalization
With these themes in mind, carriers are attempting to accelerate as many applications as possible, profitably, without taking on bad risks. But how can you do this and provide a frictionless, personalized user experience if you don’t know the user’s intent?
The short answer is…you can’t. This effectively morphs Real-time Intent Data from a “want” to a “must-have.”
Let’s take a closer look at the forces compelling insurance companies to incorporate Intent Data into their customer or agent experience…
Accelerating digital commerce in insurance continues. Insurance carriers are selling an increasing percentage of their business online. As they continue adding product lines to their digital distribution channels, the growth rate is compounding due to the huge digital adoption rates driven by COVID. The toothpaste is out of the bottle – there is no going back.
Customer expectations have changed forever. Thanks to innovations like same-day shipping from Amazon, instant streaming from Netflix, and on-demand cars from Uber, customers expect to get what they want, when they want it. The same now applies to insurance. Customers and agents alike expect instant quotes, underwriting decisions, and the ability to buy online.
Exploding claims and adjustment expenses driven by inflation, extreme weather, fraud, and COVID deaths forced carriers to shift focus from growth to profit. With that, carriers are focusing on reducing underwriting risk without creating unnecessary friction.
Capital markets and investors have shifted towards a preference for profitability and cash flow generation. This is true in both the public and private company markets. Profitable and risk-managed growth is job number one.
Big data, machine learning, and data science continue to transform the economy. Perhaps no industry has been as data-rich as the insurance industry, but today the insurance industry needs to adopt machine learning, new data sources, and deep data science to become data-driven vs. data-rich. We always say insurance has been in the data science business for hundreds of years.
Competition continues to evolve and commoditize existing insurance products and relationships. Key competition dimensions include price, personalization, ease of use, and speed.
Looking ahead to this year, I believe Behavioral Intent Data will become standard practice for leading insurance carriers, and the insurance industry will accelerate the deployment of new, sophisticated datasets like ForMotiv’s in 2023.
Many of the existing insurance leaders are leveraging ForMotiv’s Intent Data to:
- Power dynamic, personalized customer journeys based on a real-time understanding of intent
- Drive real-time next-best-action for individual users
- Enhance ML models with a highly predictive 1st party behavioral dataset
- Increase bind or placement rates
- Identify probable non-disclosure or premium leakage to improve loss ratios
- Reduce losses without unnecessary friction
All of this, and more, is possible with ForMotiv which is why I’m confident 2023 will be the year of Real-time Intent Data.
Join me, the ForMotiv team, and many of your peers in making that happen. Together, we can relieve some of the industry’s pressure and give customers and agents the experience they deserve.
Sincerely,
Bill Conners, CEO