In January, the CoreLogic® Protect team hosted its first-ever INTRCONNECT™ conference, where hundreds of property insurance and restoration professionals gathered to learn and collaborate with one another about the future of the industry – and how to remain relevant and successful within it.
An overwhelmingly successful event, attendees of the conference enjoyed expert panel sessions, collaborative breakouts, and a number of networking opportunities to swap and enhance their ideas on the trends and challenges that the industry faces.
From the enlightening speakers and panelists and great conversations with other influential industry professionals, we at CoreLogic came away with some essential concepts.
We’ve put together our key takeaways from INTRCONNECT– lessons to follow to help future-proof your business.
Connect your ecosystem
Whether part of the property insurance industry or the restoration sector, you must always look further than your immediate environment. Policyholders don’t think of claims and restoration as two separate processes, and neither should service providers. From filing a claim to having weather-related damage fixed, customers think of it as one operation. Carriers and contractors should follow suit.
To optimize the end-to-end process of restoring normalcy for policyholders – all while maximizing customer experience – insurance carriers, Third Party Administrators (TPAs), and restoration contractors must collaborate throughout the entire lifecycle. They must have a shared goal and work as partners to achieve it.
This connection is the only way to make the completion of claims more efficient and to keep policyholders informed and confident at every step – thus enhancing customer experience.
As one speaker at INTRCONNECT noted, “the carrier is selling a promise, which is a noble mission.” This begs the question, “how do we fulfill it across the entire value supply chain?”
The answer is to eliminate the tension between stakeholders – which was once typical in the dynamics between carriers and contractors – and make the entire process collaborative.
Until a policyholder’s claim is resolved, carriers and contractors must constantly communicate – making decisions and performing tasks based on consistent, up-to-date information. They must have one single source of data and direction for every customer and project.
The only way to connect all stakeholders with one central source of information is through integrated data sources and technology. To connect people, it is imperative to connect the different platforms they use to manage and execute every job.
For example, by having carriers’ underwriting and estimating solutions securely integrated with their entire suite of claims management software and having integration points with their vendors’ restoration job management platforms, data can automatically transfer and be shared in all systems – offering transparency for all stakeholders. Everyone works with the same data, in turn eliminating errors and inconsistencies.
By integrating platforms across the entire claims and project lifecycle, service providers establish streamlined, simplified, end-to-end workflows. These workflows facilitate faster claims completion while removing silos and resulting miscommunication that leads to errors on both carrier and contractor sides.
The bottom line: carriers and contractors must approach claims and jobs as one workstream – one goal to achieve. Eliminate traditional, fragmented processes by establishing better human relationships and complete digital connections.
Provide personalized customer experiences
When people start a claim with their insurance provider, they are in a time of need – great instability. They must be treated not only as projects to complete but also as humans in their moment of need.
Carriers and contractors must deliver personalized customer experiences while managing multiple clients with different needs and varying projects at different stages.
In other words, it’s vital for every company to integrate personal touches with digital processes.
Companies must find a way to talk to policyholders, so they aren’t overwhelmed by claims and restoration processes. This is the most effective way to ensure that customers maintain confidence in their insurance providers and the contractors repairing their properties. Translation: greater customer satisfaction and retention.
With the right platforms – from texting alert platforms to contractor tracking applications – customers get automated, personalized updates and communication they need to stay informed about the progress of their claims. Feeling a part of the process empowers customers, and instills in them greater confidence in their service providers.
Also, these technologies give insurance professionals and contractors better insights into every customer case so that they know precisely when to make a personal phone call or send a customized email.
Leverage a full spectrum of data to make decisions
Accurate data drives decision-making that results in the greatest business value.
As CoreLogic Protect President Garret Gray said in his opening keynote presentation, it is sophisticated, transparent, accurate data that leads companies to achieve compliance more easily, improve communication between all stakeholders, and settle claims more efficiently.
Using technology built on data, decision-makers pursue the best course of action – making decisions that optimize business – in every scenario.
For example, CoreLogic platforms are embedded with property data so that contractors and carriers can look at a full spectrum of property characteristics as they make decisions. On the insurance side, CoreLogic offers data models so that insurance carriers have objective, clear-cut ways to build their rating systems.
In leveraging up-to-date, accurate digital information – data produced with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Image Analytics – insurance carriers can make better underwriting decisions and create more accurate estimates. Contractors then know how to best proceed with every job, knowing that their actions align with the right insurance policies.
It’s essential to look at both data that pertains to specific properties as well as data regarding climate conditions of where the property is located. Looking at climate change models, for instance, also contributes to an insurance carrier’s ability to make important, accurate decisions about policies.
Challenge norms
As the keynote speaker, Mike Walsh – the CEO of Tomorrow – asked the audience, “what if the future of your job was not to do your job, but to destroy your job?”
Don’t let the idea scare you.
Technology like AI and Machine Learning (ML) will only continue to change the way the property insurance and restoration industries work – along with customer expectations. Instead of resisting change, people within every company should become versatile enough to redefine their roles and responsibilities to complement AI, ML, and other future technologies. These digital capabilities won’t eradicate jobs; they will instead continue to allow professionals to challenge traditional ways of working – to expand their own uniquely human skill sets.
With this approach and relationship to burgeoning technology, humans will have the opportunity to do even more to differentiate their businesses and to handle growing challenges more effectively. As Walsh also said, “when you automate, you elevate.”
Also, defy tradition by listening to the youngest people in your organization. A leap toward future-proofing your business is listening to its future. Understanding how the newest members of the workforce prefer to receive their information – and how they define a successful customer experience – just might be game-changing for strategic planning.
Embrace the uncertainty of the future
Uncertainty is the only constant we can count on – especially from an ecological standpoint.
Due to climate change, natural disasters are only happening more frequently.
With increasing temperatures, Dr. Howard Botts – Chief Scientist at CoreLogic – said that we will continue to see increased flooding and intense rainfall at a much higher rate. The same goes for other weather perils.
Climate change raises many questions about what the future will look like for everyone – and few industries are thinking harder about it than property insurance and restoration.
To succeed in this industry, contractors and carriers must embrace these climatic uncertainties. There is no way to predict the environmental future with certainty, so businesses must constantly look at climate data and models to get a holistic – even futuristic – perspective of the properties and communities they serve.
With the right approach, there are opportunities for insurers and restoration contractors amid climatic uncertainty. For instance, as one speaker said, “it will be crucial to the future of the insurance business to determine how teams will handle more and more claims quickly and correctly while maintaining customer service.”
Carriers and contractors can future-proof their businesses by understanding and preparing for a full range of climate risk-based scenarios. And, while it’s hard to have a catch-all plan for the future, you can establish a strategy that is as comprehensive as possible by using the right data sources and technology solutions.
Incorporating catastrophe risk models in business planning – to analyze the frequency and severity of occurrences – will be crucial to the survival and continued success of players across the property industry.
It will also be increasingly important for carriers and contractors to leverage technologies that allow professionals to do their jobs virtually. These digital solutions will allow professionals to tackle more jobs and execute them more efficiently and consistently – all while assuming minimal personal risk.
INTRCONNECT: Preparing for 2023 and beyond
There were plenty of lessons to be learned at this year’s INTRCONNECT about actions we can take and approaches we can adopt in 2023 – and beyond.
Check back in the coming weeks as we delve more into these takeaways through a five-part blog series.
To learn more about CoreLogic, contact us today.
©2023 CoreLogic, Inc. The CoreLogic® statements and information in this blog post may not be reproduced or used in any form without express written permission. While all the CoreLogic statements and information are believed to be accurate, CoreLogic makes no representation or warranty as to the completeness or accuracy of the statements and information and assumes no responsibility whatsoever for the information and statements or any reliance thereon.
