words Alexa Wang
Life is full of uncertainties and unexpected ventures into the unknown. This is why you have to always be prepared; taking precautions isn’t really a luxury, but rather a necessity. The best way to be prepared is through insurance policies. Health insurance is important because medical treatment is expensive and you never know what might happen tomorrow, if not years down the line.
Your car should be insured because accidents can and do happen. The most important precaution, though, is life insurance. If you are the primary provider of the family, this particular policy is how you ensure they will be financially secured after you’re gone. This form of insurance has drastically changed over the years, and life insurers keep on innovating to accommodate modern society. Here’s how:
Online Life Insurance
Perhaps the most important way life insurers managed to accommodate the ever-growing and changing society is by making the process digital. Now, there are companies like eLife that conduct business online, for the most part, aiming to improve and make the life insurance application process easier. It usually takes up to weeks, but now it can be done in under 15 minutes! This massive breakthrough has been a welcomed innovation by a lot of people, who might’ve wanted a life insurance policy, but found it cumbersome and exhausting to go through the process using traditional means.
Improved Customer Relations
Over the years, customer service has significantly grown and improved, because service providers started realizing that just selling a product or service isn’t enough. You have to include a strong after-sales service that is capable of supporting growing customer demands and concerns. People always have concerns and questions in this day and age, and if you don’t provide them with an answer, they will find someone who will. So, life insurers have begun implementing more efficient customer service strategies that provide better care for their clientele.
Affordability
With most insurance policies, people dread the notion of having to go to an insurance company because they think they will have to pay a lot of money for any plan. This is the prevalent notion of life insurance policies. That is far from the truth because according to MoneyExpert.com, you can get a life insurance policy for just £5 a month! You can definitely pay more and get better benefits, but the option to pay less and get a decent plan is still available, which is quite reassuring. This is another area where life insurers have significantly innovated. As society developed, people’s needs have changed. Living standards have significantly improved, unlike wages. So, insurers understand the importance of creating adequate policies for affordable prices to cater to people’s needs if they want to stay in the game.
Automation
Life insurance, like most insurance forms, entails a lot of paperwork and a usually bureaucratic process. You have pretty boring steps like preparing manually written notifications and the underwriting that takes a lot of time and effort. It didn’t make sense to have such tedious tasks done by people, especially in the digital age we live in, which life insurers were quick to realize. Companies spend a lot of money on hiring people to do boring jobs, when they could better invest in machines to do those tasks and let people do other more relevant things. This entails significantly reducing costs and, more importantly, improving efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence in Life Insurance
It is not just the mundane tasks that are benefitting from the rapid advancements and emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence (AI) is also being used in the process of claims processing. One of the biggest challenges facing insurance –– life or any other kind –– is the fact that claims processing takes a lot of time, and decisions are usually delayed. This is only normal because an employee needs to gather all the data and relevant information to make a decision about a claim. This happens with all insurance types, which is why claims take a long time. This is where machine learning algorithms come in. They can significantly cut time from the process and enhance the entire claims processing part of the insurance business. This is done by taking out the human factor in certain areas that would expedite the process.
There is no telling how much further life insurers would innovate to accommodate society, but they definitely will. The life insurance business is a very competitive one, and those in it need to go the extra mile to stand out. At the end of the day, it is the people that benefit from such innovations, so it’s definitely a good thing.
