3 reasons why no-code helps drive sales in insurance

We live in a digital-first world. Consumers expect a seamless, personalized, and user-friendly experience across multiple access points and channels. A no-code approach can enable insurers to respond effectively to those demands, boosting the bottom line and improving profitability in the long run.

Consumers embrace digital channels for researching and buying insurance products, and their expectations for the quality of user experience are sky-high. A seamless, channel-agnostic experience across all touchpoints is now the standard that all companies must strive to meet. Or risk being left behind. 

The bar is being continuously raised by emerging competitors and new market entrants such as InsurTechs, whose unique selling propositions often revolve around digitally enhanced customer experiences.

The three stages of digital transformation in insurance

45% of insurers claim that changing customer expectations are the primary business driver triggering investments in new technologies. 

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[.figure]45%[.figure]

[.emph]of insurers invest in new technologies primarily because of the changing customer expectations[.emph]

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Consumers no longer compare insurers to other insurers – incumbents are up against the best digital experiences the tech mavericks such as Amazon, Netflix, and Google have to offer. In 2021, the expected digital experience will be personalized, immediate, and multi-channel.

But the story is much more complicated than that. Competition is becoming tougher by the minute as digital experience standards rise across the board.

At the same time, transitioning to new, digital-first business models is a tough task. Digital transformation is a long process. Insurers’ journey to a holistic, integrated digital offering can be conceptualized as encompassing three distinct changes: digital channel, digital experience, and new business models.

First stage: the digital channel

At this stage, insurers are introducing digital technology to offer their customers a digital, online experience. The initiatives found at this stage often involve replacing paper-based, manual processes with digitally enabled tools and applications. Automated workflows are being introduced to replace manual processes, both at the back- and the front-end.

This is the first step towards a fully integrated digital offering, but it is insufficient to answer today’s customer requirements.

Second stage: the digital experience

While the first stage includes sporadic digitization, the second stage entails digitizing the end-to-end processes. Insurers who reached this point in their digital transformation journeys are now focusing on ensuring that customer data flows freely throughout the organization, the back-end and front-end tools and systems are seamlessly integrated, and the processes are digitized end-to-end without interruptions.

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At this stage, insurers are starting to offer their customers a seamless omnichannel experience in the true sense of this word.

Third stage: the new business models

Digitization is not enough. The third wave entails leveraging customer data and analytics to expand product offerings and enhance business models focusing on profitability. Here insurers start to explore new revenue streams, risk-assessment tools, and models and vastly improve customer experience that is now treated as a fundamental aspect of their business.

No-code becomes more crucial as we are nearing the digital tipping point in insurance

We are nearing the digital tipping point to stay afloat, incumbents don’t simply need to digitize the existing business models – they must disrupt their own operating models to break ahead of the competition.

Enhanced digital journeys that are powered by data become essential. But is it possible to catch up to the digital-first competition? 

No-code tools empower insurers to quickly catch up to digital competition and transition from the first to the second and third wave of digital transformation quicker than ever before. By embracing visual, drag & drop development environments accessible to business users, no-code tools democratize digital transformation and enable the non-developer user to quickly create digital customer journeys.

Digital journeys in insurance: the new paradigm

As insurers transition to new business models and embrace digital channels as a primary sales generation tool, digital journeys become a critical asset. 79% of consumers worldwide say they will use a digital channel for insurance interactions over the next few years.

And yet, when it comes to crafting digital experiences, insurers are still lagging. To date, only 22% of insurers have already launched personalized, real-time digital or mobile services. 

Insurers must bridge the chasm between customer expectations and their digital capabilities quickly. Lagging behind and “making do” with half-automated, half-manual workflows and adopting a piecemeal approach to growing digitization capabilities is no longer going to cut it. 

How no-code tools help drive digital transformation in insurance

Stage 1: Digital channel - Quickly transform manual, paper-based processes into digital journeys

Stage 2: Digital experience - Seamlessly collect digital journeys with the back-end systems

Stage 3:New business models - Empower accurate data collection and analysis to push innovation forward

Time to market

Traditional IT projects take time. But the time to market new digital apps and technologies is becoming a crucial competitive advantage.  This is especially crucial for companies stuck at the first stage of digital transformation. 

Insurers can no longer afford to wait upwards of 4 months to introduce new digital tools to their customers. No-code tools amplify existing resources and ensure agile delivery of new digital tools. 

By leveraging a no-code platform that enables the quick creation of digital experiences, insurers can quickly digitize areas requiring complex, custom development. 

One such area is forms and paperwork. A lot of insurers are still relying on paper to collect customer data and signatures. In this day and age, this is no longer acceptable for many potential customers. Quickly digitizing this area with a no-code platform enables insurers to quickly digitize this critical part of a customer journey, opening up the way to the third stage of digital transformation.

When data collection is fully digitized, insurers can transition to the digital experience stage of their digital journeys and get underway towards the third stage where they are starting to use the data they collect in order to develop new business models that push the envelope of what is possible for customer experience in insurance. 

Democratizing digital transformation

Democratizing digital transformation is crucial for crafting truly outstanding digital experiences. By giving users who know and understand customer needs best the power to develop digital experiences, insurers can quickly spin up and test new innovative products without delays.

The chasm between IT and business users is becoming ever-smaller, helping organizations innovate and develop new business models instead of focusing on the technology aspect of digital transformation.

Pushing the envelope on personalization 

In 2021, personalization is expected. As businesses collect troves of data on their customers, and customers are increasingly aware that giving their valuable personal data is an expensive commodity. They expect to be paid back in an outstanding, personalized experience at every interaction. In a way, the price for giving up personal data is the significantly improved customer experience. 

Users expect businesses to use the data they collect to improve their digital experiences. To do that, the data must be accurate, and the analysis should be centralized. This is difficult to achieve at the first two stages of digital transformation.

A platform that orchestrates the data with the sole purpose of improving customer experiences is a necessity at this stage.

Fast and efficient

Speed is of the essence. Those insurers who are still lagging behind at the first stage of digital transformation must quickly come up with ways to skip to the third stage quickly. No-code tools can help insurers gain that advantage by moving fast, testing quickly, optimizing, and improving along the way.

Relying on code and traditional development tools is no longer feasible, especially for customer-facing digital journeys.  When it comes to digital transformation, insurers have a choice: be disrupted or be the disruptor. Quickly skipping from the digital channel stage to the digital experience stage to the new business model stage is what is required to compete with the best-in-breed experiences all around us.

No-code tools empower insurers to quickly come up with new products, services, and business models to ensure success.