Bain & Company Offers Global Insurance Customer Loyalty, 2014

By Mandira Srivastava
TMCnet Contributor

Bain & Company, a business consulting firm, has presented report on "Global Insurance Customer Loyalty, 2014”. The new comprehensive customer survey and report includes opinions of 158,000 policyholders in 18 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

The Bain survey mapped customer sentiment based on Net Promoter Score (NPS), a ratio that precisely measures customer loyalty by comparing a company's promoters to its detractors. The survey states that greater customer contact improves a carrier's score without exception, and insurers who lead in providing hybrid, multichannel methods for customers to interact experienced an additional boost.

The survey revealed that the share of digitally active customers is as high as 75 percent in some countries, and is expected to grow sharply over the next three to five years – a finding that underscores the need for a flexible, hybrid "Digical" service offering.

In the case of countries, the percentage of digitally active customers is lowest in Belgium and Japan, at 25-30 percent, and highest in the U.K., at 65-75 percent.

Digital-only interactions consistently deliver lower NPS than multichannel interactions.

Gunther Schwarz, Bain partner based in Dusseldorf and lead author of the report, said in a statement,  "But the rapid and pronounced shift to a "digical," multichannel customer offering is a disruption that insurers must act quickly to address.  They need to focus on building out digital channels for transactions and communications, restructuring physical communications networks to focus on higher-value services, and redesigning overall processes to integrate all these channels seamlessly."

Bain's research also offered few additionally recommends to insurers. The research recommends having a clear understanding of their target customers based on demographics, behaviors or interests. Bain's survey showed that the filing experience has higher potential to "wow" customers than the actual subsequent payment.