The sales and distribution networks of Australia’s insurance companies are experiencing a range of challenges. These include improving agent productivity, reducing customer churn, ensuring compliance, cutting inefficiencies in lead management and streamlining time-consuming, manual sales processes. Overcoming these obstacles requires the use of data analytics to drive decision-making across the entire insurance sales cycle, from initial awareness to final transaction.
The key pain points for insurance companies can be grouped into three categories:
Customer retention: The insurance industry is under immense pressure to meet rising customer expectations for seamless digital experiences. According to a McKinsey & Company survey, 71% of customers now expect companies across all industries to deliver customised services, while 76% show frustration when businesses fail to do so. To remain relevant and competitive, insurance companies must invest in upgrading their digital channels, enhancing customer experiences and offering more personalised experiences, all while retaining customers in a highly competitive market.
Cost pressures and profitability: Low interest rates, rising reinsurance costs and rising competition from insurtech disruptors are restricting profit margins. Insurers need to innovate in cost management, particularly through automation and AI, while maintaining competitive premiums.
Technology change: The rapid emergence of insurtech disruptors using AI, blockchain, big data and other new technologies is intensifying competition and raising customer expectations of digital experiences. Many traditional insurers struggle with legacy systems, the high costs of technology upgrades, and integrating new data types and sources while ensuring privacy and security. In addition, regulatory pressures and the need to retrain workers to adapt to new technologies adds complexity, making technological adaptation a critical hurdle to overcome for insurers to remain competitive.
These categories are deeply intertwined and the opportunities available to insurance companies through addressing them effectively are considerable. For example, as management consulting firm PwC has pointed out, embedded insurance–insurance-like products tied to a core non-insurance product, such as mobile phone damage coverage provided through a post-paid plan–is poised to increase dramatically, due to changing consumer behaviours and new technologies. In fact, PwC puts the market value on offer in Australia at $35 billion by 2033.
FPT Software’s AI Agent Digital Platform is designed to help insurance companies and their agents to optimise sales performance through the extraction and presentation of valuable customer insights, directing addressing the above pain points
Using AI and data to deliver high quality, personalised customer experiences and drive retention
AI Agent Digital Platform (AIDP) can help insurers deliver the seamless, customised experiences that are essential for agents to promote customer retention. Thanks to AIDP, agents can now streamline their tasks with high efficiency and acquire enough data to better craft insurance solutions to meet needs for customers. Specifically, the platform is designed as an all-in-one application that centralises multiple functions such as lead management, policy submissions, optical character recognition, and electronic Know Your Customer.
Centralised customer data and 360 degree view: AI Agent Digital Platform centralises all customer data and provides a complete profile, allowing agents to personalise their engagement based on comprehensive insights into customer needs and behaviours. This function also endores up-selling opportunities by capturing customer income and their insurable interest. This enables more effective customer retention strategies.
AI-driven recommendations: With AI suggestions for follow-ups and personalised engagement, agents can proactively reach out to customers, providing a tailored experience that improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer care and multichannel support: AI Agent Digital Platform integrates with social media and various customer service channels to ensure seamless communication, enhancing the customer journey and retention.
Controlling costs and improving efficiency with automation
AI Agent Digital Platform helps streamline agent workflows and optimise operations through automation, which can help reduce overhead costs by minimising manual work involved in sales process, reducing human error, and increasing lead conversion rates. These improvements in efficiency directly address cost-reduction concerns and can improve overall margins.
Using AI, automation and analytics to drive digital transformation
AI Agent Digital Platform integrates AI, automation, and data analytics to streamline operations, such as lead auto assignment, customer data centralisation, and activity tracking, making it easier for insurers to deliver personalised digital experiences that meet evolving customer expectations. The platform also supports real-time reporting and automated processes, reducing reliance on outdated legacy systems and lowering operational costs.
With enhanced cybersecurity features, AI Agent Digital Platform ensures compliance with data privacy regulations. Additionally, its digital recruitment and training tools help insurers upskill their workforce, while gamification drives agent engagement and productivity, fostering a smoother digital transformation.
A leading regional insurer is already reaping considerable rewards from the deployment of AI Agent Digital Platform. These include:
- centralising data from hundreds of thousands of customers and dealers to easily extract insights that drive business strategies
- empowering data-driven decision-making by capturing and making near real-time data accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, generating automated reports with interactive dashboards and creating reports relevant to people at different levels of the business
- improved business performance through an AI-powered chatbot that enables agents to manage workloads and turbocharge productivity, as well as individual performance improvement recommendations and remote onboarding, online training and community sharing.
- digital, streamlined processes that deliver cost savings through the integration of technologies such as optical character recognition and electronic Know Your Customer applications that remove manual data entry and monitoring requirements, and
- enhanced customer experience, with users able to access consultation processes at each stage of care to record customers’ needs. Other features include appointment management, customers’ birthday notifications, and customer care support.
- 25% increase in number of MRDT members , 10% increase in agent productivity, 33% increase in value of new business have been recorded after one year adoption of AIDP
“With AI Agent Digital Platform and our 15 years’ experience working with leading industry players, we are driving the insurance industry into a more intelligent, customer-centric future,” said Truong Hoang Phuc, Director of Finance Services Solutions Group, FPT Software.
With AI Agent Digital Platform, the Australian insurance industry has a unique opportunity to accelerate and realise the benefits of digital transformation, including empowering its agents and management teams with rich insights and data-driven decision-making.