Please consider this post to be a sort of noodlin' around the ways insurers could apply mobility solutions. I do have a bias: I think that until insurers, and insurance agencies/brokers, can operate entirely using apps on smart devices they can't really call themselves "mobile-next."
To find potential insurance mobility solutions, focus on the customer (you know, the rascal who pays the premiums) and enable him to:
- Access the insurance company/insurance agency web site using a smart device. This means that the insurance firm (carrier or agency) has to have the ability to push requested information to the customer's smart device in a manner that fits the smart device. Fit for purpose, as it were.
- Request and consume service on a smart device. This includes getting served in the manner the customer wants, whether text, voice or video and preferably in real time. This means the insurance firm must have the business operational service systems in the "state" necessary to provide effective and efficient service to the customer in the desired manner.
- Self-serve by using a smart device. This would include accessing and downloading documents stored in the insurance firm or perhaps in a private cloud set up for the customer (whether COI, policy forms, claim forms or loan forms).
- Begin and preferably finish a policy application entirely on the smart device using e-signatures (which were approved way back during President Clinton's administration). I realize that quotes/rates and underwriting decisions could very well mean that it is not a "sign on and get it done in one shot" kind of situation. However, whatever stops and starts happen, the policy application process should stay in the mobile realm and never require the customer, anyone in the agency or anyone in the carrier to have to re-enter information.
- File the first notice of a loss and track the entire journey of the claim adjudication from beginning to end, including getting an alert when the claim check is deposited in the customer's requested banking account.
- Use the smart device to pay a premium by taking a picture of a check rather than mailing in a check or even using a payment service to pay the premium amount.
- Collaborate with claim managers, customer service representatives or others in the insurance firm (carrier or agency) using only the smart device.
