Novarica’s Insurer Client and Council Member Weekly Town Hall have been a great way to connect with the community and update client carriers on the quickly evolving trends Novarica sees in the market. Our ability to hold these meetings virtually has allowed us to deliver timely and pointed insights into the evolving business climate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Novarica appreciates the insights that it has gleaned from working with Research Council members and looks forward to assisting companies as they turn these insights into action plans.
Novarica will continue to deliver an all-virtual 2020 events calendar for the rest of the year. Town Hall sessions will continue every Tuesday, 1-2 PM EST, until 2021, with a one week break for Independence Day. Novarica will focus on new and emerging issues each week, including what a return to the office may look like and how to manage a remote workforce.
At last week’s Town Hall, a panel of Novarica VPs and CEO Matthew Josefowicz reviewed Novarica’s recent Research Council Study, Insurer Digital Strategies: Current State and Post-COVID Plans. Novarica polled P/C and L/A insurers on revisions to 2020 priorities based on the evolving situation in 2020-Q2. Most life insurers are playing catch up in the digital and innovation space, but the priority for P/C insurers is to reduce cost and increase operating efficiency. The discussion then focused on how insurers are defining their digital strategies.
Novarica VP Paul Legutko discussed the ways that organizations can use technology to support digital marketing strategies and provide relevant content to consumers. He noted that insurers “should focus on their brand messaging, customer engagement, and analytics.” The overarching message was that insurers need to look under the hood instead of continuing to run pre-COVID engines blindly. Paul used the example of Bank of America shelving its “What would you like the power to do?” marketing message. BoA determined that the message was out of synch with new business and economic realities since many of their customers have felt quite powerless during this time.
Journey mapping came up in the discussion as a way for carriers to understand their position in the market and what they need to do to improve experiences across their ecosystems. One participant added that insurers should focus on creating journey maps that are “good enough” and refine them over time, rather than attempt to perfect them to an impractical, unactionable level of detail. Simplification and quick action are vital concepts in the move to remote work; insurers can apply the lessons they learned during lockdown toward improving their digital strategies.
Matthew Josefowicz discussed how e-signatures and completely-digital applications are becoming table stakes and how this paradigm shift is changing distribution channels. Many insurers are opening up to things that were technical possibilities in the past, but which faced cultural, operational, and political hurdles to implement. COVID-19 has forced insurers to reexamine how they and distribution partners need to interact in the future. These reviews have forced many insurers to address the gaps in their digital strategies.
This coming week, Novarica VPs Deb Zawisza and Nancy Casbarro will join the Town Hall meeting with a panel of insurer IT leaders to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 further. The conversation will center on how to manage a remote workforce during and in the aftermath of the pandemic. We look forward to sharing these and other insights this summer and for the rest of the year.
Registration for Novarica’s Virtual Town Hall meetings remains open here.
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