KEY TAKEAWAYS:

--Convergence means many parts of the industry are consolidating, and strategic partnerships are proliferating. Platforms and marketplaces are springing up and bringing many product offerings together. Home life and the workplace are converging, as are technologies such as those that enabled the smartphone.

--Today's insurance services will become increasingly obsolete. Drawing on technology, insurers are already shifting their value proposition from “repair and replace” to “predict and prevent.” This shift will change almost every aspect of insurance, including skills requirements, product design, distribution and pricing models.

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The violently disruptive and confusing shifts we are all experiencing are in large part a result of accelerating convergence. 

According to Marc Benioff, founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, “The world is being re-shaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces.”

Another perspective on the same phenomenon comes from Chunka Mui, author, futurist and innovation expert: “We have the good fortune and awesome responsibility of sitting at the inflection point of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For better or worse, ever better and cheaper technological building blocks, including pervasive connectivity and computing, AI, robotics and genomics, are blurring the lines of the physical, digital and biological worlds. They are already reshaping industries and societal patterns, and the transformation is accelerating.”

This convergence is taking place across all industries, products, services and technologies. Its influence extends to the blurring of the previously clear separation of our work and personal lives, giving rise to the current focus on work/life balance.

Convergence and the Insurance Industry

Insurance is one of the larger industries to have significant exposure to these shifts, given the dependency on accurately predicting and managing risk and on the broad and diverse customer base, and we are already seeing the effects of this convergence.

In the financial services industry, convergence is bringing together banks, credit institutions, wealth management and insurers to develop products that combine the elements of each sector.

Consolidation of market share is another form of convergence, as the big get bigger. The $800 billion U.S. property & casualty insurance industry is highly consolidated, with 2% of carriers holding between 50% and 75% market share across most lines of business. This consolidation has caused many supply chain segments in the insurance ecosystem to themselves consolidate to meet the many new and different  needs and expectations of these large national carriers.     

In the estimated $500 billion U.S. auto insurance ecosystem, several highly fragmented segments, including collision repair, auto glass, insurance replacement car rental, salvage management, towing, third party claims administration and independent appraisal and adjusting, are seeing significant consolidation because of investors with access to large pools of capital. While thousands of these individual businesses controlling billions of dollars in revenues have already been consolidated, the process still has a long way to run in most segments.  

See also: The Power of Ecosystem Transformation

Strategic Alliances and Partnerships, Mergers and Acquisitions

Alliances and partnerships between participants in the insurance ecosystem are the result of, and precursors to, convergence. Historically, fewer alliances and partnerships existed because management believed that their company’s core competencies were competitive differentiators, and the “not invented here” prejudice was prevalent. The most progressive of companies may have collaborated with others, but nothing more formal than that.

As industry consolidation proceeded, new participants came to market leveraging new technologies, and competition in general heated up. Partnerships and alliances became recognized as valuable and eventually necessary. Similarly, mergers and acquisitions became attractive strategies to further formalize these benefits. One good example of this evolution is CoreLogic’s partnership with, minority investment in and ultimately acquisition of the property claims information software provider Symbility in 2018. The acquisition has helped CoreLogic compete with Verisk and its Xactware property estimating solution suite. 

Management began to recognize the value of these combinations in product development, speed to market, rationalization of duplicated overhead and acceleration of revenue. In some cases, partnerships with especially attractive companies were defensive, as suitors sought to keep these companies out of the hands of their competitors.  

Platforms and Marketplaces

Other more indirect forms of alliances and partnerships are emerging in the insurance industry in the form of so-called platforms and marketplaces. The most-recognized of these “hybrids” are the platforms created by insurance core system providers such as Guidewire, Duck Creek, Majesco and Sapiens. These companies are enabling third party information and service providers to integrate into their core systems and thereby become easily accessible to hundreds of common insurance clients, thus avoiding lengthy, resource-intense, one-to-one integrations. Some of these core system software providers have begun acquiring the more attractive and popular of these third party partners (e.g., Guidewire’s 2021 acquisition of HazardHub and Duck Creek’s 2023 acquisition of Imburse).

Other examples of platforms that focus more on claims, especially auto physical damage claims, include CCC Intelligent Solutions, Mitchell Enlyte and Solera/Audatex. All have numerous strategic partnerships with multiple third party providers, with many integrated into core claims solutions and linked to their common customers for ease of access and use. We expect to see many more of these strategic alliances, some of which may well result in acquisitions and further market consolidation by these claims information services and solutions providers.

OEMs and Insurance

Car makers, otherwise known as OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), auto insurers and software developers are converging. Most OEMs have partnerships with insurance companies around auto insurance distribution and repairs, even as some are simultaneously focused on developing their own bespoke auto insurance operations.

OEMs are developing certified repair networks in which collision repair shops that follow OEM repair guidelines are “certified” to perform repairs on those brands. This certification includes the use of OEM parts, as opposed to the less expensive alternative parts, which insurers frequently prefer. And today’s vehicles are essentially computers on wheels, as OEMs pursue subscription software models in which consumers pay for specific premium auto features “over the air” on a monthly basis. OEMs believe the market size for subscriptions will be in the tens of billions of dollars by 2030.

Telematics-enabled products are also converging as vehicle-installed software and programs and motion detection data resident on smartphones are aggregated. These hybrid solutions will enable greater functionality and reliability for solutions such as accident notification, emergency response and crash detection, which will be heavily monetized by auto insurers, OEMs and others.     

Workplace Convergence

For most of us, our workplaces and our homes converged during the pandemic, and for many of us that continues to be the case, either partially or completely. The implications of the shift to “work from home” are felt by the insurance industry in more ways than by most industries. Being so historically labor-intense, insurance companies own more physical facilities than most other industries, but that is changing rapidly. Most notably, Allstate insurance, one of largest personal insurers in the U.S., recently sold its entire 2 million-square-foot headquarters campus in the Chicago area. 

Technology Convergence

The smartphone is a prime example of technology convergence, in which several previously separate technologies (telephones, wrist watches, digital cameras, computers, web browsers and GPS navigators) were fused into a single easily portable device.

Data convergence has increased as AI software programs became capable of processing huge volumes of data into actionable information.  

According to a report published by Dell Technologies with the Institute for the Future, 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 hadn't even been invented when the analysis was done in 2018.

Likewise, the insurtech movement and the large amounts of capital invested in it over the past 10 years caused convergence between technology and insurance. While perhaps not the upending of the insurance industry that some had predicted, the movement has certainly accelerated adoption of digitization and automation in insurance processes and the leveraging of big data and analytics.

See also: Insurtech: Not Dead but Different

Future of Insurance

In such a changing world, today's insurance services will become increasingly obsolete. Drawing on technology, insurers are already shifting their products and value proposition from “repair and replace” to “predict and prevent.” This shift will fundamentally change almost every aspect of insurance, including skills requirements, product design, distribution and pricing models.

Embedded insurance represents both new insurance products and new distribution channels. Similarly, episodic insurance (e.g. travel interruption insurance) is a new insurance product enabled by technology and delivered digitally. 

Managing Convergence

Perhaps the most powerful convergence of all is the convergence of the future and the present. The speed of technology-enabled advancements continues to accelerate, and what was new only yesterday is replaced by even more important advancements today. This is as true in the insurance ecosystem as it is in every other industry. The basic question for insurers and others is – how do you manage your business in a world where planning based on historical experience and reasonable expectations is continually being proven unreliable?

To manage convergence, companies will need to be excellent at anticipating the future, innovating beyond their core and transforming their capabilities as rapidly as technology can enable it. This will require leadership to become expert change managers, encourage innovation in more powerful and practical ways with more than just lip service, ensure that the entire workforce is future-ready, develop more powerful intelligence-gathering capabilities to better anticipate and respond to competitive threats and communicate core strategies and changing priorities in a frequent and highly articulate manner. It will be necessary to have every employee understand that it will be a new and very different ballgame.

These skills will define the winners in a rapidly converging world.

Mark the date: Aug. 10, 2023, was the day when the starting pistol was fired for the rollout of autonomous vehicles. 

Everything to this point was testing. But the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3-1 last Thursday to allow two robotaxi services -- GM's Cruise and Google's Waymo -- to operate at all hours of the day in all parts of San Francisco and to charge riders.

What happens now?

A lot, and as quickly as Cruise and Waymo can manage -- but only step by step. Let's call the next phase radical incrementalism.

It has taken quite a while to get to this point in the rollout of AVs, certainly longer than General Motors expected when it bought Cruise in March 2016. I'll 'fess up to some excessive optimism myself, having written a book with Chunka Mui in 2013 called "Driverless Cars: Trillions Are Up for Grabs."  

Part of the issue is the sheer complexity of the technology. Glitches don't appear often -- but often enough to cause skepticism. In 2021, Waymo cars developed the odd habit of pulling into a particular cul-de-sac in San Francisco, then making a three-point turn and leaving. Residents complained that as many as 10 cars a minute were buzzing up and down their quiet street, waking many people up in the middle of the night. Just last week, as many as 10 Cruise driverless cars simply stopped in the middle of the street in San Francisco's North Beach area. The crowd at a concert was using so much cellphone capacity that the cars lost contact with their home bases when they neared the venue and shut down. More problematically, driverless cars can get confused in the presence of emergency vehicles -- a complaint that the San Francisco Fire Department made at the PUC hearing.

The glitches have happened often enough that resistance has developed among San Franciscans, even though the city may be the most technologically aggressive in the world. Some protesters learned that they can confuse an AV simply by putting an orange traffic cone on its hood, and they do, paralyzing cars with indecision.

The broader problem is that the technology has to fit into an existing system full of human drivers and pedestrians and adapt to all -- as in, every one -- of our odd little behaviors. That's double-parking, opening car doors into traffic, cycling the wrong way on a one-way street, darting out from behind a parked car... you name it. And driverless cars are trained to be cautious, so they're weak about left turns in traffic and no good at all on a crucial bit of human driving. You know the one I mean: You have to merge into a steady stream of traffic, so you make a quick move and hope drivers think you're just reckless enough to pull into their lane, even though you're just feinting. Then, when one of them blinks, you pull out in front of them.

Cruise and Waymo both say their cars haven’t caused any traffic fatalities. Waymo says its self-driving vehicles, in fully autonomous mode, haven't even caused a collision with another vehicle in their first million miles.

But now they have to prove it in full-on commercial operation. That means roughly 300 robotaxis for Cruise in San Francisco and 250 for Waymo. Waymo says it has a waiting list of 100,000 signed up for rides in its AVs, so the cars should get a workout.

Getting San Francisco right will be step one in the radical incrementalism of the AV rollout.

Step two will be expanding into other cities. Waymo has been gradually rolling out service in Phoenix and will continue to expand there -- the environment is far more favorable than in a city like San Francisco, which is why I count the California PUC's decision as the start of the real rollout. Waymo is also beginning service in parts of Los Angeles county and Austin, Texas. The company says it currently provides 10,000 fully driverless rides per week and will soon reach 10,000 a day. Cruise has announced plans for robotaxi service in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami and, most recently, Nashville.

Other companies will likely jump in, too. For instance, Amazon's Zoox has been testing self-driving technology in San Francisco and is developing a boxy vehicle specially designed for taxi services. (I'm not discussing Tesla because its approach to driverless technology is very different -- it mostly consists of Elon Musk claiming every year for the past decade that full self-driving is months way, only for it never to arrive. He may get there eventually, but, for the foreseeable future, "self-driving" in a Tesla requires a human driver with eyes on the road and hands on or right near the wheel.)

Step three will move self-driving beyond cities. At the moment, self-driving of the non-Tesla variety requires extremely detailed maps, so the car can triangulate and figure out exactly where it is even in rain or snow. But Cruise says it wants to get beyond its home base in San Francisco and serve all of California. If it can do that, then the handcuffs will truly be off. Cars will be able to drive even in areas that haven't been carefully mapped -- meaning AVs can go just about anywhere. 

Those are just the initial steps for robotaxi services, but car and tech companies won't stop there. They didn't spend tens of billions of dollars developing the technology, with tens of billions to go on the rollout, just to be a cheaper Uber. Step four -- a huge step -- will be an attempt to replace your car with an AV, whether you own it or just summon it from time to time. That means a whole set of other steps to watch for.

Fortunately, my friend Chunka laid out those steps for us in a series of LinkedIn posts here, here and here in 2018.

Let's look at the key issues he raises that are still in play and see how AVs are progressing.

--Mass production. Basically, the question is: Even when the AV technology is ready to go, will car companies be able to manufacture enough? I'd say this is a pretty clear yes, especially because the slower-than-expected rollout has given car companies time to prepare. GM has said the ability to turn technology into cars is a competitive advantage that it intends to exploit.

--Charging infrastructure. Again, the slow (in relative terms) rollout for AVs has given companies time to recognize the issue and prepare. We're a long way from having enough charging stations, but companies are building out the infrastructure quickly. A key is that companies are rallying around the Tesla plug as a standard -- it just doesn't work if you pull up to a charging station and find the plug doesn't fit your car.

--Fleet management and services. This will be one to watch as Cruise, Waymo and maybe others scale up. The issue with AVs isn't just whether the technology works -- as high a hurdle as that is. You also have to position the cars so they're as close as possible to those people who want to commute into a city in the morning and then back to the suburbs at night. You have to be able to recharge the cars and to clean them whenever a couple of kids covered in sand roll around in the back seat -- or adults engage in other forms of recreation. You need to ward off criminal behavior, such as having people use your cars to make drug deals. You have to have a backup when someone puts an orange cone on the hood or when the cars lose cellphone connection because of a nearby concert. You have to assume that major competitors such as Uber and Lyft will respond to your entrance into their market and be ready to react. There is a lot of potential for trouble here.

--Customer service and experience. Cruise and Waymo say customers settle into a driverless car and begin to trust it within minutes, but that first ride will still be disorienting, and many customers will always need care that they can no longer get from a driver.

--Security. Women may feel more comfortable traveling alone because they won't have to worry about a male driver, but it's possible to stop a driverless car just by standing in front of it -- you know it won't run you over -- and the cars are a huge target for cyber hackers, so plenty of security issues will surface. 

--Regulation. It's going to take regulators a long time to get their heads around all the issues with AVs -- how can it be otherwise? In the meantime, anyone dealing with driverless vehicles will have to be prepared for twists and turns.

--Public acceptance. This is what Cruise and Waymo are testing now, and we'll know soon enough. Based on my rides in AVs, starting a decade ago, I think Cruise and Waymo are right, and people will quickly become comfortable. But we'll have to wait and see. I learned long ago not to trust my personal impressions.

--Business viability. Early on, AV companies seemed to underestimate the complexity of operating robotaxis as a business. They didn't think in terms of the positioning of cars, the recharging, the cleaning, etc. They now seem to be more realistic and have even benefited from some changes in the economic environment -- the soaring cost for cars, including auto insurance, and the fact that Uber and Lyft are finally charging realistic prices, rather than heavily subsidizing fares as a way of capturing market share. Even if AV makers pass this first test of viability, the much bigger one will come when they try to move beyond today's robotaxi services and into the market for personal auto ownership in a few years.

--Stakeholder resistance. One person's cost saving is another person's revenue -- so all the benefits from AVs will face pushback. That could be from car dealers, insurers, personal injury lawyers, oil companies, truck drivers, transit unions and so on. Potential losers include some of the most influential policy shapers at federal, state and local levels.

--Congestion. When services become cheaper, people buy more of them, right? Well, if driverless cars become as cheap and simple as proponents believe they will, that could mean an awful lot more cars on the road. Various studies have found that Uber and Lyft have increased congestion in pursuit of convenience. We'll have to see what AVs do to the broad traffic picture.

If you put on your insurance hat and look at all the steps between last Thursday and a transformation of the world's transportation systems, you can rest easy for a while. It'll probably take a couple of years for robotaxis to be rolled out in metropolitan areas, even if all goes well. Then it'll take a few more years to get outside cities and on to the open road. Even if AVs become viable replacements for private cars, it takes a dozen years or more to replace all the cars on the road. So, personal auto insurance isn't going away any time soon. 

But I hope I've given you some sign posts. You can take your thinking today about how quickly AVs will roll out and either move up or postpone your estimations based on how well things go in San Francisco, how quickly the rollout to other cities occurs and so on down the line. 

Just remember: The starting pistol has been fired, and some massive corporations are now running as fast as they can.

Cheers,

Paul

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

--With risks changing so dynamically, historical data alone is not sufficient for insurers to embrace the future. Insurers need to be able to experiment with future scenarios to enable evidence-based decision making

--Digital twins make that possible, whether for a part of the business (such as distribution via agents), the whole business or even an ecosystem involving multiple partners.

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2023 is witnessing elevated levels of risks and disruptive events not seen before, including the world's hottest month in July, wildfires in the Greek islands and in Hawaii, cyber incidents, drought and a food crisis because of the war in Ukraine. With risks changing so dynamically, historical data alone is not sufficient for insurers to embrace the future. 

Insurers need to be able to experiment with future scenarios to enable evidence-based decision making. Digital twins, in conjunction with generative AI, will be a gamechanger. Insurers will be able to innovate on products, provide differentiated services in risk consulting and improve sales and distribution, policy servicing and claims.

Digital Twins: 'See, Rehearse and Adapt' 

A digital twin is a virtual representation of physical entity, data, its relationships and behavior. It is an AI-driven platform aided by simulation. It will act as a critical enabler for executives who need to rehearse the future. Accurately predicting the future is virtually impossible given the speed and complexity of converging factors. Instead, businesses need to “See, Rehearse and Adapt” to likely and extreme scenarios, and digital twin technology will dramatically advance the ability to leverage this framework.

For example, a digital twin of an Indian city was used to model COVID-19 characteristics, demographic heterogeneity, mobility patterns etc. and predict the spread. The digital twin helped officials explore effective interventions such as vaccination roll-out strategies and lockdowns through what-if scenarios. This approach helped curb the spread of viruses and reduce or mitigate the burden on healthcare. 

Improving Supply Chain Resilience and Health

Consider a scenario where a mattress firm sources its raw material from its suppliers in Texas and Louisiana and transports it to the manufacturing facility by road. The insurer can create a digital twin of this supply chain ecosystem (beyond primary suppliers) and highlight risks such as the lack of diversity in the supplier network or failure to use multi-modal distribution channels. Combining this digital twin with information on imminent storms, contractual deadlines and so on can help estimate probable risk accumulation and simulate potential business loss scenarios. Such scenario analysis will empower insurers to offer clients risk insights that can help improve capital management and implement mitigation measures for business continuity.

Or consider how COVID-19 has exposed health inequities, how mental and emotional issues are increasing and how the population is aging as lifespan increases. There needs to be an innovative approach to address health, retirement gaps, etc. Insurers can leverage digital twins to simulate health risk scenarios and recommend or drive behavioral change via awareness, empowerment, access to preventative care, empathy-based personalized care etc. Insurers can do this alone or by orchestrating the work of partners in ecosystems.

See also: Do You Need a 'Digital Twin'?

Building a Better Future

The shift in insurers’ mindset from risk transfer to prevention unlocks greater value to insureds and society. Digital twins enable insurers to reimagine their process, personas and products and deliver operational efficiency, personalization and customer-centric product design.

For instance, insurers with aging agents can leverage an “agent twin” (characterized by traits and behaviors of experienced agents) as a playground for new agents to learn from actions/recommendations (i.e., data) from seasoned agents and historical data sets. Insurers can experiment with illustrations and reinforcement learning for effective multi-path strategies, etc. and foresee potential outcomes.

The potential applications are profound. 

KEY TAKEAWAY:

--By empathizing with client needs, emotions and concerns, an independent agent can foster trust and loyalty to ensure a positive and memorable encounter that drives long-term advocacy.  

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Human-centric agencies take the time to build and nurture relationships, develop loyalty and show up for the local community, whether by supporting youth sports, being there when disaster strikes or giving to charities. But how do you take this human-centric connection to the next level and create a truly empathetic client experience? The first step: Understand the true meaning of empathy and the connection to the customer experience. 

Consider Brené Brown’s take on empathy. Brown, renowned for her work on leadership and for her widely viewed TEDx talk on the topic, says, “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘you’re not alone.’”

Understanding the connection between empathy and client relationships can take your client experience to a new level. By empathizing with client needs, emotions and concerns, an independent agent can foster trust and loyalty to ensure a positive and memorable encounter that drives long-term advocacy.  

The facts

With economic fears high, many businesses are weary of additional spending, and some may even look to customer experience (CX) investments as a place to cut back. But many companies find that the short-term cost savings have long-term consequences. At Vertafore, my team understands any cutbacks to the CX department would be a huge gamble. Now is the time for steady investment in human-centered support as customers depend on these knowledgeable teams for a variety of business-critical activities.

In 2023, customers continue to look for exceptional service with not only a human on the other line, but helpful staff who can understand setbacks, talk through scenarios and work to find a solution. An article in Deloitte Insights says, “Two-thirds of customers who switch brands do so because of poor service, and analysts predict that customer experience—including support experience—is expected to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.” 

Focus on three key areas for continued CX success: active listening, clear language and personalized experience.

Active listening 

Insurance is a deeply personal industry. Clients come to insurance agents seeking protection and support during vulnerable times. The whole agency should practice active listening to build trust and foster long-term loyalty, leading to increased customer retention and positive word-of-mouth referrals.

By attentively listening to client questions, concerns and goals, agents can gain a deeper understanding of their unique situations and provide empathetic responses once the client has completed their exchange. This careful listening enables agents to offer tailored solutions that meet individual needs and build trust and confidence. Agencies that build a culture around kindness and respect will come off loud and clear to the end insurer. 

See also: A Little Empathy Goes a Long Way

Clear language

By avoiding technical jargon and employing everyday language, agents can empower clients with knowledge and enable them to make informed decisions aligned with their unique needs. 

Clear communication can be achieved through multiple platforms. Interactions through different channels, such as phone, email or chat, can be adjusted for tone and pace depending on the client on the other end. Training team members to actively listen, ask probing questions and validate client emotions can significantly enhance the customer experience. Maintaining the right balance of professionalism and compassion is essential, as it enhances the customer experience, cultivates trust and ultimately leads to greater satisfaction. 

Personalized experience 

In an age where customers are inundated with generic marketing messages, personalization emerges as the key differentiator that sets agents apart, creating a competitive advantage that directly affects the entire agency. As businesses strive to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of customer expectations, investing in personalized customer experiences becomes not only essential but also a strategic imperative for long-term success and growth.

By harnessing technology as an enabler of efficient and empathetic communication, agents can leverage its capabilities to enhance client interactions and ensure they feel heard, valued and supported throughout their insurance journey. Technology can empower agents with a complete view of client history and preferences, enabling them to deliver more personalized support during interactions.

Reputation is everything in a crowded market 

When clients feel genuinely understood and supported, they become advocates for your agency. They're more likely to share positive experiences with friends and family, amplifying your agency's reputation and attracting new business organically. CX drives over two-thirds of customer loyalty, which represents more than brand and price combined. 

Customer reviews and feedback play a crucial role in shaping public perception. By consistently delivering empathetic client experiences, you position your agency as one that values and prioritizes the needs of its clients. This positive reputation can help you differentiate yourself in a crowded market and attract high-quality clients.

The bottom line

For independent agencies, the losses that come from poor support can be measured in dollars. But there are other considerations here. Supporting clients with empathy, active listening and clear actions to solve their problem benefits the entire agency and builds a positive workplace culture. It also results in a tight-knit community of employees ready to handle whatever comes next.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

--The recent numbers are way up from 2013, when women held only 6% of top executive positions and 13% of board seats in the industry, but much work remains to be done.

--The key ways forward are: emphasize accountability, not just verbal commitments; celebrate progress; and collaborate with like-minded people across the industry.

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The insurance industry has been welcoming a complement of diverse and nontraditional talent throughout the past decades and embracing a future of opportunity through various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This has brought a diversity of thought and sense of belonging that has not only created more fulfilling workplaces but has spurred innovation and boosted profits. 

A Little History

In the early days of insurance, roles for women were typically limited to administrative and clerical work. By 1930, the roles for women in insurance started to evolve, with nearly 15,000 women employed as insurance agents and officials in the U.S., according to Intact Insurance Specialty Solutions. 

Over time, the workforce changed further. We saw a greater presence of women in leadership positions and the emergence of professional associations. In 2013, leadership at the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF) decided to launch our first Women in Insurance Global Conference, with a goal to provide a robust platform for discussions designed to advance women’s roles and voices in the industry. 

Our leadership recognized that the advancement of women leaders had, in a way, somewhat stalled. Women in insurance were largely still not present in the top decision-making process or represented in large numbers in the C-suites. Conferences, meetings and industry dinners at this time were still heavily male-dominated, including IICF’s own benefit dinners. 

As our conference series grew and thousands of insurance professionals attended our events in New York, Chicago, Dallas, London and Los Angeles, IICF understood that not only women in our industry needed these forums as a platform to share their voice. During this time, the industry was in the early stages of its DEI journey, and IICF expanded the scope of its conferences by embracing broader topics. In 2020, we hosted our first IICF Inclusion in Insurance Conference.

Progress as Seen Through Our Lens

Our conference series gives us a clear window into the industry, and we've noticed progress in the following areas:

Women in Leadership

Throughout the 21st century, we have been working as an industry to close the gap in leadership roles in insurance. As of 2013, women held only 6% of top executive positions and 13% of board seats in the industry, according to data from St. Joseph’s University Academy of Risk Management and Insurance. This was a challenge we sought to address at our inaugural global conference. 

We started with a simple approach centered on having the few women in senior-most leadership in our industry share their career journeys. Female executives from across the industry gathered to share their own experiences of how they rose through the ranks of insurance, what challenges they faced, such as work/life balance, and what lessons they had learned. Over the following years, we added to our model, discussing empowerment, the gender gap and how to break through the glass ceiling. These sessions provided powerful insights and actionable advice for our fellow industry members.

We have seen some progress as more businesses in our industry promote women into top leadership. The figures remain low, signaling that more work needs to be done. Recent data found only 19% of board seats and only 12% of top officer positions are held by women. This still is significant progress from a decade ago. 

The Development of a Business Case

In 2015, McKinsey unveiled a comprehensive study showcasing how a diverse workforce is correlated with better financial performance. Further industry research highlighted how the next generation of talent prefers to work for an employer that fosters a workforce with broad representation. And from there, our industry was empowered with a strong business case to make greater strides toward a fully inclusive workplace.

The IICF conference centered discussions on this business case, why executives needed to have a sharper focus on their recruiting practices and how to directly address challenges recruiting and retaining diverse talent. We then moved to individual responsibility, sharing what steps people from all levels in the industry can take to create real change in the workplace and why everyone’s actions, regardless of role, matter in the grand objective of creating a fully inclusive future for the insurance industry. 

See also: Solving the Puzzle on Inclusion

A Broadened View of Inclusion

The umbrella of inclusion and belonging today covers a much wider range of topics than it did a decade ago. Inclusivity and developing a culture of belonging has become a powerful movement across our industry as companies have introduced initiatives to support, include and empower individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences, as well as create allies. IICF accordingly has evolved our conference series to include many new perspectives and voices. 

Throughout our decade-plus of leadership conferences, IICF’s conversations encompass women leadership in the industry, accessibility, mental health and wellness, women, caregivers and veterans returning to the workforce and much more. By retaining a special focus on women in insurance, our global conference remains a unique opportunity to engage, grow and network. 

We continue to see businesses acting on initiatives designed to enhance a sense of belonging. We see that it’s now commonplace for insurance organizations to have employee resource groups (ERGs) dedicated to making individuals from different backgrounds and experiences feel comfortable with their role in the industry and see a path to upward mobility, as well as mentorship initiatives focused on welcoming and advancing non-traditional talent.

Where We’re Headed

Over the past decade, we have learned much from our IICF leadership conferences, speakers, thought leaders and others about the real progress toward a fully inclusive industry. Experts say our best approach to continue this positive trajectory includes:

Accountability: This year, we’ve heard that DEI fatigue has been a consistent conversation across the industry. A suggested best practice for the future is an emphasis on accountability, where it’s not enough to simply verbally embrace inclusivity and where leadership promotes accountability for the successful implementation of these initiatives and measure overall progress. 

Recognition of Progress: Once progress is identified, leadership should ensure teams are recognizing and celebrating it. When people can see progress firsthand in their own workplaces, any fatigue will not only fade away, but those employees will also be inspired to do more.

Collaboration: Industry collaboration is also essential to moving inclusion in our industry forward. There is so much we can learn from each other. Recently, we convened the industry for our biennial IICF Global Conference in New York City, gathering colleagues from across the industry along with leading experts in inclusion and belonging. And next June, we’ll host our IICF Regional Forums in Chicago, Dallas, London, Los Angeles and New York, where we’ll continue to advance ideas into action together as an industry.

Our industry has undergone a tremendous evolution in terms of inclusion and representation, especially during recent decades. The insurance industry can continue to build toward a fully inclusive workplace with a sense of belonging for all. Let’s keep the momentum going.

A reliable stream of renewal income from the policies agents sell will ensure a comfortable retirement. Although the retirement income their renewal stream will generate may be years away, there is something agents can do now to optimize it. They can make sure that the business they’re writing today will be sustainable for the future.

Sustainable business is higher-quality business. It’s achieved by getting clients to not just buy but to also “buy-in.” The art of gaining client buy-in can be mastered with the right intention and by following four simple principles. Agents will reap the benefits of applying these four principles for years to come.

Principle #1: Have clients feel as included as possible in their financial planning process.

Clients who buy-in to their purchasing decision will keep their policies in force over the long term. Agents must invite clients to be as personally involved as possible in their purchasing decision and financial planning.

It’s tempting for agents to want to sound smart. An agent may think that, if they assume an authoritative demeanor, then the client will defer the decision-making to them. Even if this strategy is successful, it’s short-term thinking.

Once the agent is gone, that client assumes the role of decision-maker. The decision to keep a policy in force ultimately rests with the client, not the agent.

Taking a back seat may not be ego-gratifying to an agent who wants to assert maximum control. However, agents who allow clients to assume a larger role in their own planning will secure a higher degree of client buy-in.

Principle #2: Be the learner, not the teacher. 

For agents to maximize their client’s personal involvement, the agent must learn about the clients’ own beliefs, values, priorities and concerns. Once those are understood, an agent can integrate reasons for buying with those thoughts and feelings expressed by the client. Clients will assume a higher degree of personal ownership for purchasing a policy as a result.

See also: The Power of Lifecycle Marketing

Strategy #3: Join your client’s team.

A team cannot exist without a common goal. The client’s goal is to make the best decision about whether to invest in the agent’s product. Most agents are not pursuing this goal. The typical agent’s goal is to just get their clients to buy.

Divergent goals make teamwork impossible. Agents can only be their client’s team member by redefining their goal to match their clients’ goal. Agents must take on the role of helping clients make the best investment decision for their unique circumstances.

There are many advantages to having clients consider their agent to be on their team. Clients will be more forthcoming. They will be more willing to be vulnerable and admit when they’re uncertain about something. Agents learn about their clients more quickly when their clients are being upfront and transparent. 

Joining a client’s team reduces the negative judgments agents typically harbor during client interaction. When agents harbor an agenda of wanting to get the sale regardless of the client’s true need, they’re more prone to making judgments. For example, agents will be likely to judge if the interaction with their client is going their way or not going their way. These judgments are distracting. Agents need to be learning as much from their clients as possible. If an agent is listening to their own inner talk instead, then they’re not paying full attention to their client.

These negative judgments can also interfere with establishing client rapport. Agents who think they need to steer a conversation toward their own self-interest are often met by client resistance. Clients who want to make a decision that best suits their circumstances won’t go along with agents trying to steer the conversation toward a different aim. A client may end up buying anyway, but they’re less likely to buy-in. 

Principle #4: Be more customer-conscious than self-conscious.

Prioritize the importance of your client’s buying performance over your own selling performance. 

Every sale involves two conversations rather than just one. Agents can only hear one of these conversations; the other one is silent. The conversation agents hear is the conversation between them and their client. The conversation they don’t hear is the buying conversation happening between their clients’ ears. We commonly refer to it as decision-making.

It’s ultimately the outcome of the silent conversation that determines sales success. In other words, an agent doesn’t get a sale unless their client decides first that the agent will be getting that sale. 

A good decision performance by your client ensures that the policies they buy will stay in force. The quality of your clients’ decision performance depends on the quality of their inner conversation. Agents need to pay attention to this inner conversation by asking questions about clients' thoughts and feelings. It’s the salesperson’s equivalent of “keeping one’s eye on the ball.”

Agents can act now to secure a financially secure future by consciously approaching client interactions by following these four principles. Agents will empower their clients to make the best decisions for themselves. Just compare the level of rapport that develops when someone is empowering you rather than disempowering you. Consciously approaching client interactions with this intention fortifies an element of sustainability in every sale. Agents will enjoy a reliable renewal stream, financial security, plus have a lot more fun in the process!

Welcome to the new age of customers!  

Nearly every organization that sells its products and services in a B-to-C market goes through product, channel and service shifts brought about by consumer demand. Shifting business strategy to meet the customer is nothing new. Sometimes these changes are enacted through acquisitions. Sometimes they are brought about by greenfield business units. However, they come about, they are essential for long-term survival and growth. Consider some popular brands you know, and you can see the shifts in action.

Banana Republic was once a safari and travel clothing outfitter that even sold books. QuikTrip and Wawa were small-scale "convenience" grocers without fuel sales. Sony’s most popular product was once a Walkman tape player. KitchenAid was just a mixer company.

Every company is shifting as customers shift, and insurance is no different.

Insurers are in a transition between what they once were and what they may one day become. You may see this transformation happening in your own organization. What if one day your company generated significantly more profitable income from services, side offerings and partner products than it did from some of your core insurance products?

If you knew this could happen, how would it change your plans? The idea is not unprecedented. In a business world flush with new opportunities, executives commonly push their companies in the direction of customer demand and profit, not necessarily in the direction of the organization’s core competency.

That means it is always the right time to understand what the customer is thinking and needing and where customer demand seems to be growing.

Majesco recently released its annual consumer trends report, Enriching Customer Value, Digital Engagement, Financial Security and Loyalty by Rethinking Insurance. We assess the top-of-mind issues for today’s customers and look at how Gen Z and Millennials especially are looking for ways to achieve financial wellness — across all financial aspects of their lives, including P&C and L&AH products. How will technology-enabled products and value-added services add up to optimal insurance offerings for today and the future?

Using the report as a springboard, let’s look at what is changing year over year and where 2022 trends are pointing insurers for their 2023 strategies and beyond.

Gen Z and Millennials — “Serve the future me”

The future is all about the customer, and in insurance it is all about the customer’s future.

Insurance’s traditional products have always been pivotal in creating peace of mind, but new and expanding risks, market dynamics and evolving needs and expectations of customers require new ideas and approaches. Customers are seeking simple, holistic, direct experiences within a digitally immersive model. They are looking for real security over their lives and property, security that goes beyond traditional risk products and channels.

Insurers must give serious thought to offering value-added services that complement risk products and in some cases reduce or eliminate risk; providing multiple channel options, including new partnerships and embedded options and leveraging new data sources to create personalized pricing and underwriting. Beyond all this, insurers need to grasp how their company fits the future vision of a customer’s whole security picture. How much of this picture is theirs to paint?

Creating security in times of change

Resilience and financial well-being are essential to living in a world filled with risk. Customers need to be able to return to the status quo after an event – whether for assets like our businesses, homes or vehicles or for our own personal or employee health and well-being.

Customers are seeking help with managing all the complexities of their life and finances. They are expanding their view of financial wellness. They want confidence and security. Customers want an expanding focus on the prevention of losses, creating risk resilience and financial well-being.

See also: 3 Insights on Millennial Insureds

Top-of-mind issues

The tumultuous times experienced by many consumers are reflected in their responses regarding top-of-mind issues. In this year’s survey, we see that they are concerned about household finances, inflation, crime and planning/saving for retirement. (See Figure 1) The full list deserves a close review. Notice how many of the issues have a greater priority for Gen Z and Millennials than for Gen X and Boomers. Look closely at those issues garnering higher than 50% responses.

Financial well-being is about feeling secure and in control, managing your money effectively whether for the day-to-day, dealing with the unexpected (like risk and losses), or preparing for the future. This is why crime and inflation and household budget have become top issues for consumers. Uncertainty about the future will be a motivational driver for all consumer purchases in the short term.

Figure 1: Consumers’ top of mind issues

Both generations are concerned about cyber/data security/ID theft. Employment emerged as a crucial issue for Gen Z and Millennials, with a 23% stronger view in finding or keeping a job, 37% in how they would like to work and 21% in considering gig/contractor work options as compared with the older generation. This shift in employment expectations has a significant impact on employers in terms of group and voluntary benefits; cyber risk and worker safety – leading to a demand for different insurance products.

Likewise, environmental, social and sustainability-related areas are also of keen interest to the younger generation, with a 16% difference compared with Gen X and Boomers and 15% for increasing risks from severe weather. In response, some insurers are developing risk appetites based on net-zero and carbon reduction pathways, the introduction of sustainable insurance products and investments in funds that back or support insurance products.

Digital technology use trends

Gen Z and Millennials continue to outpace Gen X and Boomers in the use of digital technologies or digitally enabled businesses. Compared with last year, both generations were the same in usage, with the exception of a few key areas, as reflected in Figure 2. 

The strongest use is in the finance category, where digital payments reflect a gap of 27% to 28%, depending on the digital payment option. Despite the high usage levels, they are lower than last year’s levels, with a 25% decline in Zelle/Venmo for Gen Z and Millennials and a 15% drop for Gen X and Boomers. These declines do not align with the growth in Venmo usage, which processed $230 billion in total payment volume in 2021, a 44% increase year-on-year, and reported over 70 million users, mostly based in the U.S. This strong use highlights the need for insurers to offer alternative payment options.

Figure 2: Use of technologies and participation in trends, 2021-2022

The smart devices category showed moderate year-over-year usage increases for both generations. In particular, video security/detectors saw a 7% increase for Gen Z and Millennials and a 9% rise for Gen X and Boomers, reflecting a focus on protection, which aligns with the top-of-mind issue of crime. Both groups are willing to spend money that will improve their peace of mind.

Usage of fitness trackers increased by 4% for Gen Z and Millennials and 5% for Gen X and Boomers. This highlights their focus on health and wellness, another top-of-mind issue. The younger generation outpaced the older segment in usage by 14% overall.

Mobility saw an interesting increase of 5% by Gen X and Boomers for the usage of ridesharing services, while the younger generation saw a decline of 13%, bringing the two generations closer in overall usage of 23% to 28%. This aligns closely with industry usage statistics of 36% by Americans, which is double the usage since 2015. This continued increase highlights the shift in a broader focus on mobility options that insurance will need to meet. Can insurers become adept at insuring people on the move without their own vehicles?

Gen Z workers are more likely to have independent jobs or multiple jobs than older workers and are less likely to expect this period of financial insecurity to end, creating high levels of doubt about their eventual ability to either buy homes or retire. These views reflect a potential significant disruption in the “traditional lifecycle” of people and have significant implications for insurers in terms of insurance from group and voluntary benefits to home insurance.

Products and services demographic use trends

In looking at the holistic financial wellness aspect, the survey covered four areas: Finance, Insurance, Life/Health and Personal/Home, as reflected in Figure 3. The Finance and Personal/Home categories, as well as some types of insurance, reflected the strongest areas of focus for both generational groups, highlighting areas of opportunity for insurers.

Leading the financial wellness focus are bank account and auto insurance, with 85% to 92% usage by both generations. Following them are homeowners insurance, with 47% to 62%, health insurance through an employer, at 44% to 47%, and investments, with 40% to 47% usage.

Specifically, for homeowners insurance, Gen X and Boomers’ 15% differential reflects higher home ownership as compared with the younger generation.

This protection gap for both homeowners and renters insurance has existed for years and presents a challenge and opportunity for insurers to educate and engage consumers on their value by making them easier to purchase and use.

Figure 3: Products and services used

What stands out are the Personal/Home usage results. Amazon, video streaming and mobile phone usage of 64% to 93% reflect a strong alignment and loyalty to digital high-tech products and services. The usage and loyalty offer both a challenge and opportunity to insurers, in that usage has influenced consumers’ digital expectations for shopping, paying and customer service.

Amazon offers a pre-built audience for additional products or services that the company is beginning to enter. The recent opening of the Amazon Insurance Store in the U.K. and Amazon Clinic, a “virtual care storefront” in 32 states in the U.S., reflect how “big tech” is planning to enter the market through partnerships with other insurers. Likewise, mobile phone companies are increasingly looking at a broader relationship to “own the customer.” Verizon launched Family Money in 2021, a banking app and pre-paid debit card for Gen Z that allows parents to monitor their children’s spending and saving. Verizon’s launch follows its competitor, T-Mobile, which launched a digital banking platform in partnership with BankMobile in 2019.

See also: Tackling Turnover Amid the Great Resignation

Where does this leave insurers in providing a holistic financial picture?

As Millennials and Gen Z take the lead as the dominant buyers, the ability of insurers to capture, let alone retain them as customers will be severely challenged unless they develop a new approach. This newly dominant generation views and values things much differently. Their loyalty can be fleeting if nothing of value keeps them with a brand or company. They are not satisfied with traditional insurance processes, products and business models. They have grown up in a digital world. They expect and demand digital capabilities. They want new products that will align with their activities and behaviors. They want services, coverage and interactions that are available to them whenever they want them, and however they wish to engage.

At the same time, they need an education on how to properly see their own risk and how to “defend” themselves against the ever-increasing risks that threaten them each day. Can insurers begin serving their customers with expanded offerings, including digitally enabled preventive services and products that cover, not just their physical presence and property, but their financial and online presence, as well? Should insurers consider taking on an expanded set of banking and investment services or partner with someone who can provide them? Can insurers seamlessly provide for a healthier, more stable work and life environment that fits with today’s and tomorrow’s work and lifestyles?

For a deeper look at customer trends across all lines of insurance, be sure to read Majesco’s latest report, Enriching Customer Value, Digital Engagement, Financial Security and Loyalty by Rethinking Insurance.

For this month’s interview, ITL Editor-in-Chief Paul Carroll talked with Dan Swfit, the founder and CEO of “buyer experience” consultancy Numentum. Dan has extensive experience in helping people sell, especially through social media. He launched Sales Navigator for LinkedIn a decade ago, took a senior position with social media platform Sprinklr during its pre-IPO phase and founded Numentum nearly six years ago to help salespeople understand how buyers think and act.

ITL:

While your experience with training spans industries, when you zero in on insurance, what advice would you give agents and brokers?

Dan Swift:

I look at what the people in my life who are associated with insurance could be doing that they aren’t doing.

The folks we have our life insurance with, our long-term disability, our house and all that—none of them are on LinkedIn. So they don’t tell me anything about the organization they represent or their agency or their app. There’s very limited information about what they specialize in or about their experience. These people offer nothing to make me think they’re a standout. And there’s nothing about them as human beings.

I’d like to know something about the human beings I’m dealing with, not just send them money.

Even if agents are on LinkedIn, they aren’t very active. I want to be educated by them. I want to have the value of what I got from them reinforced all the time in my feed through a combination of stuff that the agency might have produced or that the carrier has. I saw some great stuff from the Hartford, designed specifically for small business owners like me, but it came through the corporate channel, and I just happened to see it in my emails. I would prefer to get that sort of thought leadership directly from the folks who sold me the insurance.

I chat all the time with other small business owners, and we talk about things like who we have insurance with, but I don’t recommend anyone. The folks I deal with have never done anything to make me say, “That’s my guy or that’s my gal.”

At Numentum, we train people on business acumen, and agents and brokers could do a lot just by showing they take an interest in their clients. Know that I have three young kids. Know what I’m about and who I am. When you come to me and try to upsell me, you won’t sound so transactional.

ITL:

That sounds spot-on for existing customers. What about leads on new ones? What would you recommend?

Swift:

Most agents and brokers specialize in a particular product line or aspect of the market or a specific industry, so tell me that in detail in your LinkedIn profile. When I look at your profile, I can then see your credibility and how you helped people just like me. [Here is Dan’s profile, in case you want to see how he puts his ideas into practice: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=dan%20swift]

When you reach out to someone on LinkedIn, don’t just connect and start selling. Connect, learn, nurture and then sell. Send me something that’s going to bring value to my life, maybe related to my being a small business owner. Then you’ve earned the right to ask for a conversation.

Customize the initial connection request. Don’t just hit the “connect” button. Most people have something in their profile or have posted something you could mention.

And use Sales Navigator. I haven’t worked for LinkedIn for years, so I get no credit for saying this, but, in this industry, there is literally no better tool. The tool lets you prospect based on industry type, size of organization, geography, job title and so on. You can also map your own professional network, which is why it's so important to connect on LinkedIn every day with anyone and everyone you have any interaction with – all your customers, all the people in your centers of influence, who you went to school with, play golf with, whatever. Because all the people in your network are then mapped to the companies and people you’re trying to reach.

When you ask for introductions, you can be specific. You don’t say, “Hey, Dan, can you introduce me to someone?” You say, “Hey, Dan, can you introduce me to Sam?”

ITL:

How about beyond LinkedIn? What sorts of other tools and techniques would you recommend?

Swift:

Facebook is the obvious one for connecting with customers. If you get to a certain place in a relationship, you earn the right to go off the professional network and on to a personal one, where you can learn about your customers as human beings.

Agents and brokers should use other social channels, too, for sure.

They could also be using video a lot more. I don’t just mean all the virtual conversations we’re having these days. I mean before and after those conversations.

Imagine you've got a conversation with a potential client you haven't met yet. Why not send a quick, 60-second video to the person? There are all kinds of tools that make this easy. You say, “I just wanted to put a face to a name for you before we speak on Thursday. Really looking forward to it. So-and-so speaks incredibly highly of you. Oh, and by the way, I've attached to this email some information that I thought you might find helpful as a pre-read before we speak.”

What a human way of showing up in that person's world.

Then you have the conversation, and the person might say they can’t make a decision without talking to their spouse. So you follow up with another quick video that can be shared with the spouse. You say, “I really enjoyed our chat about XYZ. These were the things we spoke about. This is what we thought made sense, and why. I look forward to speaking with you again on Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m always open for conversation.”

Imagine how much you’d stand out if you did that. People would think, Wow, this person really has it together. It’s a confidence build. It's a trust thing. It's an experience thing.

But people don’t do it.

ITL:

That sounds great. I can just imagine how I’d react if someone did that to me.

Any other particular tips?

Swift:

Despite all the technology and all the channels, I keep coming back to the need for relationships and to the simple technique of making LinkedIn part of your day-to-day. That doesn't mean living on it. It just means that any time you meet anyone, you connect on LinkedIn. Mark, the guy outside my house right now doing our landscaping, is a small business owner. Maybe when I look at someone I’d like to meet, I see that Mark did his landscaping.

“Can you introduce me?”

“Sure. Here’s his number. Just give him a call.”

ITL:

That’s perfect, but before I let you go, tell me a bit about Numentum, which is a new incarnation for you since we last talked. What does it mean to be a “buyer experience” consultancy?

Swift:

Most people we train have never bought something on behalf of a big corporation. How can they sell if they’ve never been on the purchasing side? So we teach them how buyers buy, including what issues they consider and how they get consensus. We teach salespeople how to engage with the buyer in the first place, how to educate and influence the buyer, how to take the person through a sales process so the buyer ends up saying, “I want to give you business,” versus feeling like they’re being sold to.

ITL:

I read an article the other day about how the CEO of Uber has begun driving occasionally – and had his eyes opened to issues he somehow never knew his drivers were experiencing. I’m sure that putting sellers in the buyer’s seat is thoroughly enlightening.

Thanks, Dan, for taking the time. It was great to catch up a bit.

About Dan Swift

In 2012, Dan joined LinkedIn to launch LinkedIn Sales Solutions and introduce LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Under his guidance, Navigator grew into a $1 billion+ product used by top B2B sales organizations. Afterward, Dan helped drive Sprinklr's growth to $500 million+ ARR and a $4 billion+ valuation. In 2018, he founded Numentum, a buyer experience consultancy that partners with companies like Vodafone Business, SAP, and RELX, boosting their digital buying strategies. Dan's influence also extends to advising high-growth firms, notably contributing to Accompany's $270 million acquisition by Cisco in 2018. An active member of the Forbes Business Development Council, Dan is a husband, father of three, former rugby player, and aspiring golfer.

I've had the pleasure of knowing Dan Swift for nearly a decade. He appeared on my radar when he made a splash as the director of social selling at LinkedIn, where he launched the Sales Navigator, which became a billion-dollar line of business. He kindly agreed to join my advisory board at Insurance Thought Leadership. 

Dan tapped into his inner entrepreneur even more when he left LinkedIn in 2015 and became a divisional vice president at Sprinklr, a social media management platform that later went public and currently carries a $3.6 billion market valuation. 

He struck out entirely on his own in early 2018, with a business he recently rebranded as Numentum. He calls it a "buyer experience" consultancy -- he helps salespeople put themselves in the shoes of buyers so they can see how to best fit into that process, and he has a growing roster of major clients. 

So, I was sure he'd have some useful advice for agents and brokers -- and he certainly did. 

The biggest surprise for me was something that now seems blindingly obvious but that had never occurred to me until Dan mentioned the idea. He suggests that, shortly before meeting a prospect for the first time, an agent or broker email a 60-second personal video. The ostensible goal would be to associate a face with the name of the agent, but think how much a video like that would surprise a prospect and how much that agent would stand out. 

Dan also suggests a very short follow-up video after that first meeting, summarizing the key points in a way that could be shared with the prospect's spouse -- while again making an impression.

He goes into detail about his video idea and lays out some other suggestions, too. I think you'll feel his enthusiasm bursting through his words even though you're just reading them, not hearing them on a video call, as I did during the interview.

I hope you'll read it.

Cheers,
Paul   

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The traditional method of lead allocation can burden one agent while depriving another of sufficient opportunities. To address this issue, sales engagement platforms have streamlined and improved lead allocation using a rule-based system. An ML-based system utilizes both the leads' and the agents' data fields to calculate a 'conversion propensity score' that finds the optimal matches for conversion. Implementing ML-based lead allocation can be a game-changer for carriers looking to sharpen their competitive edge and take the lead.

Generating quality leads through the website, social media, events, and mailer campaigns are something insurers are doing aggressively to win customers and gain market share. Alright, you get those leads - what next? You allocate it to the next available agent, via the trusted round-robin or a random allocation method. At least this is what would happen ten years ago. At best, an agent in the vicinity would be given that specific lead to chase. End of story.  Actually, the story never takes off.

With such an approach,

• There is a burden of leads on one agent, while another agent has insufficient opportunities
• A lead’s need may not be addressed enough for them to convert into a customer
• Managers need to constantly monitor this method making it unscalable

With technologies like sales engagement platforms, lead allocation has become more streamlined and intelligent. The application uses a rule-based allocation system to help allocate leads better, quicker. How does this work?

The application typically provides users (agent managers) an intuitive interface to build their parameters. For example, 

1. They could allocate new leads based on the lead source; from social media, from the website, or from a call center etc. and route it to a certain agent
2. Or, they could assign leads based on product - if it is health insurance, it can go to Jack, life insurance can go to Andy and so on
3. Agent managers could also allot their leads based on geographical locations, if in-person interactions is a huge factor in the lead journey
4. Or understand if the lead prefers in-person conversations, or not, in which case the lead could go to an agent in a different location but tenured in a specific type of insurance selling.
5. Beyond this, agent managers could assign leads to the first person who responds to the lead notification, the agent with the highest conversion success, or simply based on agent availability. 

With a combination of these parameters, based on the insurer’s requirement, a successful rule-based lead allocation system can be implemented. This method of allocating leads has significantly boosted lead allocation practices helping insurance organizations gain more conversions, with faster movement through the lead journey.

Happily ever after? ChatGPT says no, there’s more! 😈

With the world looking at AI and Generative AI applications as the next frontier, cutting edge sales engagement platforms are leveraging ML-based allocation methods to improve things further! 

ML-based rules allocation can bring in a superlative improvement in lead allocation efficiencies.

How does this work?

Here the rule-based allocation engine works in tandem with the ML-based allocation algorithm. So not only does the system comprehend lead attributes, it also recognizes the actions performed by the lead over time. As a starting point the lead passes through the rules-based allocation system that has been customized based on the parameters defined by the carrier. After filters on source, location, product need and more, the results are fed to the ML-based allocation system. 

Here’s where the magic happens.

An ML-based system uses both the leads’ and the agents’ data fields to calculate a ‘conversion propensity score’ - what is the percentage of success if lead A is paired with agent X? 

The match with the highest score also has the highest chance of conversion.

If it sounds like ‘matches made in heaven’ - it actually is!

The ML model keeps learning from each record and adjusts the algorithm to find best possible matches for conversion. 

ML-based allocation of leads assure 80% + accuracy in mapping the right lead to the agent - this can prove to be a game-changer for carriers seeking to sharpen their competitive advantage and take a lead. 

As insurance sales leaders seek ways to optimize operational efficiency in the distribution chain, lead allocation is an important area with a large scope for improvement. It is time to measure the,  

1. Leads being generated versus allotted
2. Lead allocation efficacy
3. Tools that can help in improving the efficacy  with a focus on using technology like AI and ML to optimize this further. 

Wait, there is room for a sequel too!🥁

The inherent ability of AI is to learn and improvise. With time, the algorithms gather the data presented to them, combine it with experience and are able to allocate leads with even more accuracy!  Insurance leaders can leverage this for better product positioning and faster conversions.