Competition between insurers continues to rise with advanced technology and all-new approaches to product development.
WaterStreet Company is here to help inform insurers of ongoing P&C insurance industry trends. We are a provider of P&C Policy Administration Software, supporting insurers through policy and claims administration, document management, third-party connections and more.
1. Wildfire Season
Wildfires over recent years have taken catastrophic tolls, and early predictions for this summer show another active wildfire season.
A wildfire potential outlook by Predictive Services shows warmer and dryer conditions compared to past years across the west and southwest regions of the United States for 2021. Predictions also indicate an on-time Southwest Monsoon season this July, which should reduce the risk of wildfires for southwestern states. Northwestern states are at a higher than normal risk of wildfires and this will likely extend from June through to August due to continued drought.
In 2020, wildfire costs were estimated to total between $120 – $150 billion. Over 4 million acres of land were lost in California alone last year. It’s important for insurers to be aware of wildfire risk areas to educate policyholders on ways to reduce wildfire risk.
Bottom Line:
- Expect another active wildfire season for southwestern and northwestern regions of the country.
- The Southwest Monsoon season may alleviate risk this July, however there are strong signs of continued drought until monsoon activity.
- Insurers must be prepared to educate policyholders on wildfire risk to reduce probabilities of wildfires affecting property.
2. Inventive Approaches with APIs & PWAs
Insurers today are pressed to think out of the box. Policyholders are experiencing heightened property values and the millennial generation of homeowners is keen on making smart decisions with life savings. When marketing to home and property owners, omnichannel distribution expands the insurer’s message across diverse channels, allowing targeted approaches on regions and demographics.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a secure portal between disparate data in two solutions, allowing insurers to leverage third-party data. This third-party data may help with internal processes such as payment processing and risk assessment, or could transform into new offerings for customers, such as Allstate’s GoodHome service.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are also quickly being rolled out. PWAs allow insurers to focus on developing websites with app-like functions, removing the need to update a mobile app separately. This lessens the burden on an insurer’s developers and frees this key resource for inventive strategies.
Bottom Line:
- Insurers should aim to alleviate developers in order to create new, inventive offerings.
- APIs and PWAs are favored in the P&C insurance industry to help attract and funnel customers.
- New approaches in offerings are required to win over a new generation of homeowners who are eager to learn about the best ways to care for their property, and to save on costs.
2. Cloud-based, Unified Solutions
Document management is among the highest priorities for P&C insurance carriers. It’s critical for insurers to focus document storage into an easy to access and simple solution, tying into each area of the business.
Unified solutions allow insurers to also communicate efficiently with policyholders, offering secure portal access into the same solution for document retrieval, claims submissions, customer service and more.
Accenture estimates less than 10% of the overall insurance industry’s workload is run in a public cloud environment. Cloud-based solutions allow insurers to dramatically save on the costs to host data and to manage legacy systems without cloud access. These solutions quickly fall behind in capabilities compared to advanced cloud-based P&C insurance solutions, and become a burden on incumbent insurers.
Bottom Line:
- Center your solution around document management, connecting all facets of the company into one easy to retrieve solution.
- Allow portal access to customers for simple communication with the company.
- Cloud-based solutions have drastic advantages in today’s landscape.
About WaterStreet Company
WaterStreet Company offers the advantage of being a one-stop shop for nearly endless capabilities. Not only are we capable of connecting to any number of third-party vendors, we offer an all-inclusive Policy Administration suite with claims management, billing, document management, reporting and more built in.
Reach out to WaterStreet Company today to request a consultation and demo of our solutions.
