If you missed the recent webcast “Preparing for the new normal of insurance onboarding with PC360,” here’s a 5-minute summary. The complete presentation is available upon request.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, insurers, financial institutions, credit unions and businesses around the world had to transition to purely remote digital processes virtually overnight. While digitization efforts in many industries were already underway, COVID-19 certainly accelerated the shift to digital-first strategies for customer acquisition, new account opening and self-service processes. In the insurance industry, a key focus of digital transformation has been figuring out how to securely onboard new customers without the face-to-face and paper-based interactions that were the industry standard for identity verification.
We have been making an effort for months to maintain the safety distance, and many companies have managed to address essential business continuity challenges to ensure their survival. As a result, we are beginning to see a readiness to address the next set of challenges: improving the digital onboarding experience.
Modern acceptance technologies, digital identity verification and e-signatures have really begun to enable organizations to simplify both the digital employee experience and the digital customer experience. There are multiple steps in the traditional paper-based onboarding process that can be completely eliminated with the help of digital technologies, leading to a simpler and more convenient experience without compromising security.
Balancing security with a better customer experience
Delivering a fully digital onboarding experience has never been more essential to meet customer expectations and provide a robust user experience. Accenture Insurance highlighted this development in a recent survey, noting a clear and growing preference for digital technologies.
However, with the increasing demand for online solutions, serious customer concerns are arising around authentication and security. In a recent Forrester survey, the majority of respondents did not feel confident using their financial information online or on mobile devices. Specifically, 36% of respondents felt it was only a matter of time before their information was stolen.
During the OneSpan webinar, the audience (79% insurance industry professionals) was asked, “How are you currently managing new client onboarding?” The results indicated that nearly 85% have already adopted partial automation strategies or fully digital onboarding practices. This is a great trend to watch and we expect it to continue in the coming years.
Choosing the right solution
Whether you are just beginning to digitize the customer journey or are on the path to full automation, incorporating e-signatures is an essential (and easy to implement) strategy that can reduce delays in customer onboarding and improve the customer experience. There are two approaches to implementing electronic signatures: user-initiated and integrated. Both provide operational efficiencies, improve customer experience and reduce document errors, but each also has distinct advantages. The former is ideal for lower volume processes and satisfies the most common signature workflows (e.g. contracts and agreements). This is a good place to start, as absolutely no development is required; simply upload your document, select your signers and you can start signing electronically within minutes.
The second is an integrated approach designed for more complex system-initiated processes. This solution gives you the ability to add e-signature capabilities into your own applications, such as your website, mobile app or any of your systems, and create automatically generated workflows. OneSpan’s industry-standard open REST API, as well as fully Java, .NET, APEX, iOS and Android compatible SDKs, allow you to integrate e-signature capabilities into any application or platform. onboarding. For a complete breakdown of the advantages offered by both approaches, see the table below:
Success stories
MunichRe is a great example of a company that was able to achieve results with digital onboarding. They worked with partners and clients to completely reinvent the workflow of their line of voluntary coverages and selected technology platforms to meet those needs. Their fully electronic process, including the electronic signature solution integrated with OneSpan Sign, allowed them to reduce onboarding time from 30 days to just 10 minutes. And since its launch in June 2020, MunichRe has increased its adoption rate from the industry benchmark of 2% to a considerable 15%.
Key finding: while price is certainly an important factor in selling insurance online, the main factor is actually the digital onboarding process itself. By making the product easy to buy and offering a pleasant and seamless shopping experience, Munich Re opened up a new source of revenue.
On the broker side, another great example is Mitchell & Whale, one of the fastest growing organic brokerages in Ontario. They adapted to the modern consumer long before COVID-19, which led them to attract a unique demographic, 50% of whom were under 40. This success is largely due to their digital strategy, for which they carefully selected technologies that met the needs of their existing workflows. By creating templates enabled for user-initiated e-signatures and requiring mandatory agent training, they were able to quickly digitize their strategy and simplify the process for both agents and customers.
Key finding: digitization efforts can be part of a larger digital transformation initiative to help streamline existing workflows, and proper employee training is essential to ensure successful integration.
Additional electronic signature resources
Thinking of switching to electronic signature? Whether it is an insurance provider, financial institution, financial services organization, credit union or other organization, consider these additional resources:
– Electronic signature readiness checklist:
https://www.onespan.com/blog/readiness-checklist-how-get-started-e-signatures-right-now
– Interactive demonstration of electronic signature:
https://secure.onespan.com/OneSpan-Sign-Interactive-Demo.html
– Watch the complete webinar:
https://www.onespan.com/resources/embracing-mobile-culture-how-satisfy-customers-without-compromising-security
Whitepaper
Beyond business continuity
In this paper, we explore the main financial processes to digitize with electronic signatures and digital identity verification technology, as well as key security considerations to support the growth of the digital-first financial services provider.
Content extracted from OneSpan.