One of the biggest issues facing local insurance companies at the moment, according to the recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) 2010 survey, is customer retention. The Strategic and Emerging Issues in South African Insurance survey shows that increasing competition, particularly in the direct insurance market, is forcing insurers to do more to keep the clients they have as the risk of losing them to other insurers is increasing.
This is forcing insurers to develop faster and better ways to provide their services to their customers. Insurers are thus looking at different technology and applications to change the way they do business, making it better and faster. According to a recent Accenture survey of 125 insurance companies, 80 percent are considering branching out into different media to make dealing with them easier for consumers.
The majority of companies that do not currently offer online insurance quoting or account management services online will be rolling out such services within three years. Only 21 percent of this group said that they were considering rolling out services such as quoting, underwriting, billing, claims management and policy management via mobile devices in the near future.
Although the uptake of smartphones in the country does make mobile access possible, their influence on consumers’ choice is not sufficient enough for this to be a viable marketing option at present, according to Accenture. It does however show that insurers are thinking of better ways to get and keep their policyholders’ attention, which should see big changes within the next three years.
About CarandHomeInsurance.co.zaCarandhomeinsurance.co.za is an online insurance policy quote aggregator that sources quotes from leading independent direct and broker insurers allowing consumers to compare insurance before signing a policy.
