As the life insurance market in Australia continues to face unprecedented challenges, we look at the key topics that are of wide concern to life insurers today.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world as we know it, altering the rules of financial planning and literally turning people’s lives upside down. Life insurance, like the rest of the financial and business sectors, has not been spared.
Facing unprecedented challenges, the Australian life insurance market is moving into an increasingly competitive environment. Nearly everything is going digital, financial rules are changing, and customers are seeking better experiences.
To help you navigate the evolving life insurance market, here are the key topics that are currently influencing the future of life insurance in Australia:
- Customer experience. Customers now demand faster, simpler, and more affordable life insurance services from both insurance carriers and distributors.
- Customer conversion rate. A strategic focus on the speed of processing customer inquiries, coupled with great customer service, is now critical for new business, especially when directly onboarding new customers.
- Focus on millennials. Life insurance carriers must find new and innovative ways to target and distribute their products and services to younger audiences. This can be done by focusing on creating easier, simpler, and better digitally enabled experiences.
- Advisor management. More focus on reimagining how to provide professional advice to customers that is personalised, convenient, and easy to understand.
- Portals. Enabling portals that can sit across the entire tech stack to create a consistent experience and enhanced capabilities, such as 24/7 tele-interviews for external users and speed of processing for internal users.
- Legacy systems. Integrations into the back-end systems create roadblocks in enabling an ecosystem that provides additional capability, connectivity, and better customer and end-user experiences.
- Legacy processes. Instead of focusing on investing in new technology that enables the optimisation of future state processes, life insurance carriers continue to spend on updating legacy processes.
- Regulatory and compliance. Regulatory change also continues to be a driving force, with insurance carriers needing to make continuous updates to product, policy, processes, and distribution.
For some life insurers, making sense of an evolving market can be a difficult feat, but focusing on what’s important can help put things into perspective. These current topics aim to give you a better understanding of Australia’s life insurance market and help you reshape your business.
