As Nigeria and African insurers struggle with the single-digit insurance penetration gap, there is no better time for insurers to implement an insurance claims automation solution than now.
According to KPMG’s Insurance CEO Outlook survey, 95% of Insurance CEOs in the U.S said new technologies are critical for sustainable growth and are confident about their growth prospects.
Over the years in Africa, the perception of automation and technology as a threat by professionals has slowed technology adoption. However, the sentiment is changing and alluding to the change in trends, Victor Muguto, an Insurance Leader at PwC Africa, says speaking on their research findings said:
“Until recently, the insurance industry was one of the world’s most disrupted sectors. The pace of technological change and shifts in consumer behaviour led to a new wave of competition that many insurance companies found threatening.
“Yet, the responses from survey respondents show that initial apprehension over digital transformation is turning into optimism. According to the survey findings, concerns about technological change and other disruptive elements have eased considerably.”
Why Insurers Should Implement Claims Automation Solution
1. Combating Insurance Claims Fraud: Implementing a motor claims automation solution will enable insurers in Africa and other emerging markets to address the issue of motor claims fraud, increasing their portfolio’s risk profile and making profitability a daunting task.
For example, In Kenya, insurers make huge losses mainly in fraudulent motor and health insurance claims, which led to about 25% inflation in insurance premiums, according to reports by the country’s regulator. The Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) further identified insurance claims malpractices, including false motor accident (injury) claims, stealing by agents, conspiracy to defraud and fraudulent motor theft claims.
2. Improving Customer Experience & Retention: The speed of serving customers from First Notification of Loss (FNOL), feedback, fraud detection, inspection, process validation, customer feedback, claims payouts or decline and more increased rapidly between 400% to 800% with Octamile’s Automated Claims Solution.
How the consumers are engaged throughout the entire claims and experience process plays a pivotal role in relationship building with consumers. The more engaged and ease they experience enabled by a claims automation solution increases the ability of insurers to improve retention. According to some reports, “over 30% of customers switch their insurers within a year after one poor claim experience”.
3. Ability to Unlock Data Insights: Smartphones and Watches, Telematics, and IoT devices are unlocking new data points for insurers to launch usage-based pricing for insurance products. Automating claims can open new possibilities that big-data insights provide to improve efficiency, reduce risk and maximise profits while delivering improved consumer experiences and business growth for insurers.
4. Improves Efficiency & Business Cost: In a report, McKinsey estimates that up to 30 or lesser manual processes account for 40% of an insurer’s cost of doing business”. Hence, insurers can eliminate up to 25% of manual labour costs by automating their end-to-end claims management.
5. Adopting a Mobile-centric Approach: The majority of the world’s population of over 4 billion people use smartphones and spend an average of 3.7 hours daily on their mobile devices. We believe it is only suitable for insurers to adopt a mobile-first end-to-end claims management approach.
It will enable consumers to file claims faster and reduce the famous “you don hit my car, oyibo repete” and time spent arguing and chanting “Do you know who I am” on Lagos roads in Nigeria accidents occur.
6. Fast-track Claims Management & Settlement: An automated claims solution will help insurers in Africa and other emerging marketings to do more by fast-tracking their entire claims cycle management to a few hours or minutes based on the unique nature of the claim filed.
In conclusion, more insurers automating their claims experience will lead to more trust and transparency with consumers. Hence, it is no longer a question of should insurers in Africa and other emerging markets adopt an Automated Claims Solutions strategy, but rather when will they?
Learn more about our Claims Solution and see how we can help you automate your organisation’s motor claims automation; schedule a meeting here with our team or email business@octamile.com.
