Customer Relations

Christa DeOliveira, CIA, CCEP

As noted in previous blog postings, It’s Similar to Unclaimed Property Compliance… and Goings on in the Life Insurance Sector, states are adding new laws many of which are based on NCOIL’s “Model Unclaimed Life Insurance Benefits Act” or at least contain similar provisions.  While these laws are generally not directly a part of unclaimed property law, but rather insurance statutes, the laws remain significant and are at minimum indirectly tied to unclaimed property.

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Greg Sohl, Lead Software Architect StoneRiver

Session preparation for the StoneRiver Summit is in full swing as spring approaches. The eFreedom Annual Statement team is working on a number of sessions that will continue to elevate the knowledge of eFreedom users.

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StoneRiver Product Marketing

Carriers are still looking for ways to improve customer service through a variety of channels like web portals and mobile apps. There was great interest during the dawn of the Internet to find ways to extend information securely to customers and allow self service. Banks immediately jumped at the opportunity and insurance carriers lagged behind for a variety of reasons including security, legal constraints, complexity of information, and platform limitations. Carriers today are taking the lead and allowing more and more access to information and the ability to enter information about their policy or claim. Our industry has made good progress to go beyond policy quoting. The goal in the end is to enhance customer experience by serving each customer in the manner in which they want to be served.

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Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

The world of electronic media is expanding rapidly. New methods of communications are being delivered quickly on new devices. Some devices leverage existing technology like email, some provide a complementary communication method like smart phones and tablets, other are breaking new ground. The ironic point of this is that these tools provide more ways to provide personal contact and communications in a traditionally impersonal way--with no human contact.

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Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

The Midwest and South have been hit hard with storms the past few weeks. Rain has fallen on the Mississippi Valley day after day into an area that cannot handle it. Add to that the windstorms, tornadoes, and flooding that is coming and you have a region in peril. Now is the time for carriers to step up and take the lead. This is where our industry can change public perception and show value to their customers; it is time to expedite claims processing to get claims reported quickly.

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Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

Remember all of the hype about the Internet back in the 1990’s: insurance carriers were all going to be virtual, agents were a dying breed, no more branches, etc. That was a far reach but we suddenly had a new way to interact with customers to conduct business. Our industry just had to figure out how that would work.

When the Internet first became a reality, it was uncharted territory. Technology was being developed just to be able to use this new communications tool. Browsers were raw, connections were slow, connectivity was unreliable, etc. There were no standards or guidelines for user interaction.

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Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

Are you keeping up with your customers? Technology is changing rapidly; we all know that. We also understand that keeping up is a huge challenge. All this change is reshaping consumer expectations and they will quickly change their expectations of their insurance carriers. Youth generally drives technology change but older consumers are quickly embracing the ability to easily access and update information. All this inter-connectivity has been around for years, but the user interaction has become so simple and so seamless that basically anyone can do it. However, too many carriers are still processing insurance on systems that are 30 years old and cannot easily adapt to the new world.

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Frank Heaps
Director, P&C Product Marketing
StoneRiver

This is the time of year when many solution providers are hosting their first of at least two user community meetings. “User community” is not just a fancy way to say “user group” but represents a way to define multiple groups that work together for a common goal; like the community where you live. To continue the analogy, these are your town hall meetings.

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“Online Sales Service is Not Going Away.” Those were the words of advice early on from Chad Hersh, principal in the insurance practice at Novarica in his session Online Customer Service Trends at Top U.S. Life/Annuity Insurers.

For the past five years, Chad has been the primary researcher and author of the market leading reports on insurance core systems, and is a widely recognized expert on the topic who has presented at numerous conferences and conducted numerous vendor selection projects for US and international insurers.

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Julie Mendel
Senior Vice President of Education Services
StoneRiver - RegEd

There are two categories of insurance markets in the industry’s cycle. These are the hard market and the soft market. The hard market is generally characterized by high or increasing rates, coverage restrictions and lower limits; a smaller appetite for insurance carriers. The soft market can be characterized by low or falling rates, the availability of higher limits and more flexible contracts; a bigger appetite by insurance carriers.

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