Turning the insurance model on its head
It was over 20 years ago that car insurance started being sold online. Despite this, the car insurance market hasn’t changed much since.
For decades, the insurance industry has tied itself to systems and processes that have been purposefully designed to favour providers. This has led to an experience that’s largely undifferentiated between providers to date. The result is a user experience that’s in desperate need of modernisation, customers frequently purchasing policies that aren’t right for their circumstances and expensive overheads which are passed onto consumers and make it impossible for legacy providers to move with the times.
“Using conversational AI, we’re turning the traditional insurance model on its head”
It doesn’t have to be this way.
At Peppercorn, we believe this can be changed by empowering customers. Using conversational AI, we’re turning the traditional insurance model on its head and last month, the team celebrated our 5000th customer buying a policy from us.
Our conversational AI assistant uses natural language understanding and is guided by the customer, as opposed to using the same one size fits all approach that has dominated the insurance industry for the last two decades. We refer to this as a C2B model, where the customer drives the agenda.
By putting the customer in control of the conversation, we are removing the need for filling out painful manual forms or waiting on hold for a call centre to answer a query, for example.
Not only does this allow the customer to better understand what they’re buying because let’s face it, insurance is complex, but it also helps to ensure they are receiving the right cover, leading to a better quality sale. And, crucially, being technologically driven enables the customer to drive the conversation when it suits them, which is essential for today’s modern customer.
An approach that constantly evolves.
Taking a C2B approach gives our business the opportunity to learn from our customers, react, listen and improve our conversational AI, meaning our assistant, which already has a deep knowledge insurance system, is continually getting better and better.
Using this data, we can spot patterns between conversations that different customers are having, which, combined with behavioural and demographic information, can support with fraud prevention, improve the precision of pricing, inform how we improve our user experience and change how we talk to customers based on the mood they’re in and even help to identify vulnerable customers, for example.
Furthermore, technology also enables this to be delivered through every digital channel possible, from Alexa to WhatsApp, with very little need for human intervention.
A model that will better our industry.
Making this process wholly self-service has benefits for the wider insurance industry too. Legacy insurance providers are stuck with the laborious costs of call centres, manual underwriters and manual counter fraud teams. AI on the other hand has the potential to automate the more tedious jobs within this process, creating efficiencies and reducing expense ratios to 10% as opposed to the industry average of 25%.
“I’ve known that Peppercorn was a great idea from the start, but the secret ingredient is the team”
A team that is unparalleled.
But, like any tech, the key lies in the implementation. I’ve known that Peppercorn was a great idea from the start, but the secret ingredient is the team. We’re a team of 27 incredibly bright experts in insurance, technology and customer experience with the right balance of insurance and technology and who are committed to transforming the insurance industry, for the better. Ultimately, that’s what has led to a successful launch.
A better bottom line, a better quality of sale, fairer pricing, a better customer experience and a world class team? Seems like a no brainer.
Article by Nigel Lombard Peppercorn CEO and Founder.