conversion from prospect to customer
For insurance companies, successful conversion relies on quickly responding to and nurturing online leads with a measurable process. But did you know that digital identity management also plays a crucial role in conversion? In this post, we look at how digital identity management can help your company get more prospects to convert, and which Customer and Identity Access Management (CIAM) technologies you need to maximise your impact.
Prospects start online, but are looking for expertise
Like with most products today, the customer journey for insurance begins online. But many insurance customers still also prefer to work with an advisor or an agent, especially when it comes to health and life insurance. These types of insurance often rely on a multichannel sales and marketing strategy. This means they offer a combination of a web portal, a mobile app and possibilities to engage in real life with an agent, especially to potential customers who are still gathering information before making a purchase decision.
Those potential customers will often start their search on your company’s website. There, you have an opportunity to offer them valuable content in exchange for some of their personal information, like their email address. Later, you may use that information during the buying process, possibly via an agent. The agent will enrich the information.
In CIAM terms, this gradual data collection approach is called progressive profiling. Across channels, insurance companies face the challenge of offering the same information exchange and an omnichannel experience. This is where your CIAM system can make all the difference.
A central identity store, with consistent security & privacy measures serving front-end and back-end applications is essential for any multichannel strategy. This includes integration of identities with apps through APIs and a mobile SDK. As agents and advisors require access to consumer data, you’ll also need an effective process for controlled, delegated and auditable B2B2C access.
Chatbots and third-party integrations
Agents increasingly face competition in the form of chatbots supported by AI. This technology has become an alternative for traditional advisors resulting in an increased net promoter score (NPS), especially for the millennials.
Yet this new technology also raises some new challenges for how insurance companies handle digital identities. In online portals and at certified agents, there are structured processes for capturing information from the prospect and an appropriate degree of identity verification is implemented. With chatbots, this works completely differently.
Identification via an app, such as WhatsApp, or any other asynchronous messaging channel, is rarely implemented, let alone integrations with a price comparison site or a loyalty programme. Often, one insurance company gets taken over by another to achieve efficiency and enable cross-selling, resulting in different labels and legal entities. Cross-selling in these cases results in sharing data between different legal entities. That definitely involves different processing purposes. So, the information exchange has to be treated as a third-party exchange and requires consent from the customer.
A CIAM platform lets you integrate with third-party applications through federation protocols for identification. It also provides the progressive profiling capabilities supported by APIs and widgets. The information exchange with third parties is subject to consent with the right processing purpose under the GDPR.
Capturing, storing and sharing consent is essential when working with third parties. These functionalities and third-party integrations are required throughout the entire customer journey and across all channels for customer support and claim processing.
Personal data: Frictionless registration, with the customer in control
Traditional web forms ask for all kinds of data right from the start. Yet, privacy-sensitive consumers will not accept this kind of interaction. They want to understand why personal data is needed at this stage. The registration process has to be easy and frictionless. And if data is already available, they expect for it to be pre-filled rather than having to type it again. The GDPR also requires data minimisation and clear information on the processing purposes that require consent.
The self-acclaimed information provided by the prospect may be fine for the initial step in a buying process. However, upon conversion, we need to do some further identity verification. There are all kinds of registers and processes for identity and attribute verification available, such as WebID (in Germany), IDIN (in the Netherlands) or GOV.UK. Once this process is complete, the insurer can rely on the data, and the new customer can be onboarded as smoothly as possible.
No matter which type of insurance, Progressive Profiling, JIT Consent and Identity Verification are essential
As you can see, the need for sharing identity data differs throughout the stage from lead to prospect to customer. But it also differs for each product your company offers. Identity verification for travel insurance is very light weight, for example, while verification for life insurance is very thorough.
During conversion, your CIAM platform supports this process with a workflow and a step-out to the required third-party identity or attribute providers. The OneWelcome CIAM solution offers a flexible workflow that is easy to set up. We refer to these processes as Progressive Profiling, Just-in-Time (JIT) consent and Identity verification. These CIAM capabilities are essential for any digital insurer.
Read the whole series
This is part 5 of a series of 5 posts about Customer Identity and Access Management challenges in the Insurance industry.
You can read the rest of the series here:
