Carriers Offer Digital Resources for Business Preparedness and Recovery from Disasters; Opportunity to Expand Mobile App Servicing
Wilmington, Del. November 4, 2024 – Keynova Group, the principal competitive intelligence source for digital financial services firms, today announced the results of its 2024 Small Commercial Insurance Scorecard. For the sixth consecutive year, The Hartford wins first place for its digital user experience catering to small businesses. Keynova Group’s annual Scorecard evaluates the desktop and mobile offerings of the 10 largest U.S. small business insurers.
The Scorecard’s findings reveal the importance of natural disaster preparedness and how small commercial insurance carriers can assist policyholders by sharing content and actions that businesses can use to prepare for and recover from catastrophic events. Additionally, the Scorecard results highlight the mobile channel as an area of key opportunity for carriers to advance digital services for small businesses.
“With the current increase in natural disasters, it’s more important than ever for insurance carriers to offer small businesses easy digital access to servicing their policies, filing and tracking claims and working with their insurance providers as partners in supporting business preparedness and recovery,” said Beth Robertson, managing director, Keynova Group. “Mobile channels are a primary option for many small businesses and should be further developed to support small commercial policy servicing needs on both a daily basis and in times of crisis.”
Key Findings:
Digital Resources are Crucial to Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Recent hurricane and wildfire activity highlights digital channels as critical to supporting small businesses, in addition to consumers, during catastrophes. Carrier websites, mobile apps and browsers can provide key alternative access routes to servicing and claims handling during a disaster. Currently, 80% of carriers’ websites highlight actions that companies can take to better prepare for possible catastrophic damage and loss. This includes 30% offering weather-specific content addressing key areas of preparation prior to a disaster, evacuation planning, and providing tools such as business resumption checklists.
Several carriers also offer videos or webinars to assist business planning. One-third of carriers offer digital access to the dates and locations to reach mobile recovery units, while 20% support digital inspection tools to speed the assessment of property damages and 40% support remote evaluation of losses to commercial vehicles. Further, half of carriers enable online or mobile claims filing for business owners’ policies and business property policies, and 70% support digital submission of commercial auto claims.
Opportunity to Service Small Commercial Policies via Mobile Apps
While 90% of the carriers benchmarked by Keynova Group offer business servicing via mobile web, just 20% enable their mobile apps for personal lines to also support small business policyholders, and none have an app explicitly designed for small business customers. N ot only are mobile devices portable in the event of a disaster, they also closely align with the daily dynamic of many small businesses.
Today, half of carriers enable single sign-on for both personal and business policies, and many insurance providers are focusing on their mobile apps as the primary digital interface for servicing. This indicates an opportunity to actively focus on building a mobile app’s value for business, as well as consumer, policyholders since small business owners are often sole proprietors.
Additional policyholder value can be created by integrating other business-specific features into an app. Half of carriers offer small commercial auto policyholders a safe-driving telematics app, and many offer mobile damage inspection tools for commercial auto and business property. Business-specific educational content that could be ported to an app is offered by 90% of carriers, and coupling business policies with a personal lines interface can also extend new digital capabilities to business accounts—engendering recurring app use to build further engagement with the carrier.
About the Small Commercial Insurance Scorecard
Keynova Group’s annual fact-based Small Commercial Insurance Scorecard evaluates the online and mobile offerings of 10 of the leading U.S. small business insurers including Allstate, Chubb, GEICO, Hiscox, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Progressive, State Farm, The Hartford, and Travelers. Evaluating approximately 300 objective criteria and measuring competitive digital capabilities and user experience elements, the Scorecard identifies evolving trends and actionable insights that influence digital strategies for carriers serving small firms.
For more information about Keynova Group’s 2024 Small Commercial Insurance Scorecard, please visit https://www.keynovagroup.com/scorecards/#insurance.
About Keynova Group
Keynova Group is the nation’s foremost competitive intelligence firm providing trusted benchmarking insights and analysis of consumer and small business digital financial services, including banking, credit card, home lending and insurance. Since 1999, Keynova Group’s Scorecards have served as the go-to source for leading financial services firms to obtain reliable competitive intelligence and actionable insights. The firm’s proven methodology and highly detailed results help its clients maximize the value of their online and mobile channels to deliver a premier experience to customers and prospects.
For more information:
Meggan Manson
Young & Associates, for Keynova Group
301-371-6995
megganm@yapr.com