Online Policy Self-Servicing, Support and Quoting Capabilities Set Leading Insurance Carriers Apart
Wilmington, Del. January 23, 2024 – Keynova Group, the principal competitive intelligence source for digital financial services firms, today announced the results of the Q4 2023 edition of its semi-annual Online Insurance Scorecard, an evaluation of 12 of the largest U.S. auto and property insurance carriers’ website capabilities. Progressive once again earns first place for its online user experience, achieving the highest overall score.
Trends identified in Keynova Group’s Scorecard show the leading insurance carriers advancing digital policy management with innovations to drive accurate and efficient policy changes, self-servicing and expanded online quoting and servicing for an array of policy types.
“Carriers are increasingly implementing nuanced capabilities that facilitate policyholder decisions and expedite policy-related actions,” said Beth Robertson, managing director, Keynova Group. “When effectively implemented, these online solutions defray the expense of live agent interactions while also building policyholder engagement through positive digital experiences.”
Key Findings:
Self-servicing Advances Enhance Policy Updates
Carriers continue to advance digital capabilities that enable policyholders to efficiently locate information and complete tasks online. As policy updates are an important area of expanded self-servicing, 75% of Scorecard carriers now enable some or all policy updates to be initiated and completed online with immediate updates reflected in the digital policy details. These carriers also enable users to quote hypothetical policy changes to see the effect of a proposed policy change, such as purchasing and adding coverage for a new vehicle, in advance of implementing the update. Carriers are also adding constructive elements that facilitate the coverage update process for policyholders: 50% integrate a coverage advice tool into the policy change interface and 75% display any incremental change in premiums. Nationwide’s vehicle change flow is streamlined, using a VIN to prefill vehicle make, model, and year details, and both Nationwide and USAA now enable policyholders to update valuable personal property online with recalculated premiums conveniently detailed on the same page.
Integrated Support Tools Drive Digital Utilization
Carriers are also enhancing integrated assistance in a variety of ways to help policyholders efficiently self-service without requiring live agent interaction. Three-quarters of carriers provide contextual FAQs or Help to support online tasks, and 25% now offer video demos of key authenticated actions such as filing a claim or making a change to a policy. These video demos offer further benefits by helping policyholders to become more confident using digital channels and informing prospects about carriers’ digital capabilities. Digital assistants are available via more than 80% of carriers’ websites, and most of them (nearly 70%) can help a policyholder locate and share their ID card. Progressive and State Farm’s digital assistants can be used to change a premium’s due date. Most firms also offer one or more calculators to help policyholders understand coverage needs or to aid in defining key parameters associated with their covered property.
Digital Quoting and Binding Options Boost Carriers’ Online Insurance Profile
Expanding the policy and coverage types that can be quoted, bound and serviced online helps carriers to strengthen bonds with policyholders. Carriers that continuously evaluate and improve their acquisition risk models also create an efficient and cost-effective process for digitally acquiring new customers. For example, online motorcycle and rideshare quoting are currently offered by nearly 60% of the carriers reviewed in the Scorecard. Three-quarters of carriers supply online quotes for term life and half quote whole life policies. In addition, 50% of carriers offer single sign-on servicing for the life policies they underwrite or support through third parties. Pet insurance is becoming more popular, with two-thirds of carriers quoting pet insurance online, though less than 10% support integrated claims filing and tracking capabilities. Flood insurance is moving to a digital acquisition model at 40% of carriers, while just 17% currently enable online quoting for umbrella coverage. Conversely, online flood claims are supported by less than 20% of carriers yet 25% offer digital filing of umbrella policy claims.
About the Online Insurance Scorecard
Keynova Group’s semi-annual, fact-based Online Insurance Scorecard, offered for more than two decades, evaluates digital user capabilities, customer experience elements, and best practices to identify evolving trends and insights that drive digital strategy in the auto and property insurance industry. The evaluation encompasses the websites of 12 of the largest P&C carriers in the U.S. market: Allstate, American Family, Erie, Farmers, GEICO, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide, Progressive, State Farm, The Hartford, Travelers, and USAA. For more information, 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 digital 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