Historically lagging behind personal lines on tech adoption, commercial lines insurers are beginning to see the benefits that digital processes and business intelligence capabilities can have across their complex, relationship-based sector. In a market that remains fiercely competitive despite recent premium increases, carriers look to technology seeking differentiation, to refine underwriting and pricing, to drive down the cost of service, and to grow.
An area of particular growth interest to commercial lines carriers (and to InsureTechs) is the small commercial sales space. The similarity to personal lines means tried-and-tested tech—notably customer data analytics, as well as UI and UX modernization—can be leveraged in the commercial lines sector rather than building new systems from scratch.
While broad in scope, technology efforts among commercial lines carriers focus most on the front end, especially on augmenting agent and customer portals. Agent portals see continued growth in real-time policy inquiry and download capabilities; they remain crucial to customer acquisition and retention, and carriers are prioritizing online policy document access. Carriers additionally seek to grow the capabilities of their consumer portals, including educational and risk prevention information as sensor and telematics data becomes more widely available.
Carriers also anticipate widespread industry transformation from drones, IoT, robots, and autonomous vehicles—notably from the consequent influx of data these technologies enable. To that end, commercial lines carriers are growing their adoption of AI and data analytics, and leveraging these capabilities across claims, customer service, and underwriting to predict claims activity better, increase customer satisfaction, and to improve risk selection and pricing.
For more on business and technology trends and challenges in the commercial lines space, see our latest report on the topic.
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