Covid-19 has forced fundamental change on us all. Necessity is the mother of invention and for the world’s insurers, necessity has never come at them so quickly as it did on 24th March 2020.

Every insurance company has a legal contract to pay valid claims... but what if those claims are coming in via call centres that can’t operate safely under lock-down rules or via postal services without post rooms to handle them?

Forced adaptation sounds like a bad thing but many companies will accelerate their claims handling and processes in ways that risk averse cultures previously prevented. Ironically, every company that has changed will have previously discussed the sort of adaptions now underway - mainly digital FNOL and distributed e-handling of claims - at board and management level umpteen times previously. Before Coronavirus, however, sunk cost bias towards existing legacy systems discouraged transformative steps that come with risks that insurers have not, until now, felt they needed to take.

When the Prime Minister addressed the UK, announcing a sweeping lock-down and social distance measures, the goal posts jumped. And, to continue the analogy, like goalkeepers who run up the pitch into the opponent’s penalty box in the last minutes of a football match, insurers had to drop their natural caution and address necessity.

360Globalnet - the no-code digital platform for insurance claims - specified, built and deployed digital claims handling systems for 6 major insurers in less than three weeks after the lock-down.

Paul Stanley, CEO of 360Globalnet, is clear that the opportunity to demonstrate retail levels of digital customer engagement within claims journeys is a key factor in driving high policyholder satisfaction while also generating substantial savings - even during a crisis.

He said: “Everyone with a smartphone knows that it’s the drip-feed of continual progress updates, simple digital interactions and shared visibility that has turbo-charged the rise of mobile retail. You order a package and it triggers a chain of reassurance that runs up to and after delivery.

“It has been exciting watching insurers - in the middle of a global emergency - experiencing the combination of savings and satisfaction that this approach can deliver in claims. They are increasing productivity and speeding up key processes which will mean they will continue even when necessity is over.”

360Globalnet’s systems include 360SiteView, its online self-configurable claims platform that automates any task and orchestrates the actions of any party to a claim.

Karin Pauli Principal at SMA has similar views to Paul Stanley's. 

"As insurers, we need to step up and be prepared, not just to preserve internal financial results, but because we can continue to improve society with the right tools, data, and insights. Products and services need to be based on the forward thinking – windshield view – as much as it has been the historical – rear-view mirror – process of the past. We are in a time when technology can be the facilitator. Out of adversity comes progress."

Her full article can be read at "Insurers must look forward, not backward, in post-coronavirus world"

The only difference being that Stanley describes technology that empowers insurers to change now rather than in the post-Coronavirus world.