In Focus: Digital insurance - The importance of CRM

Customer relationship management is enabling insurers, reinsurers, and even underwriters to engage more meaningfully with their customers. More than that, however, it is also helping insurers understand risk in greater detail. The more you learn about your customers, the more you can mitigate risk.

The ability to understand everything an organisation knows about a customer depends on being able to join the dots; break down information silos so that one policy file doesn't sit in isolation from another that pertains to the same customer.

As the connections are made so efficient customer analysis becomes more accessible and any dubious or vague histories will become easier to identify. Customers with a tendency to claim repeatedly and potential customers with other issues that weaken their value to the business can be avoided.

Insurers using robust CRM systems can build a stronger customer base and more profitable business while offering more personalised service to quality customers.

CRM systems enable the single customer view - driven by treating every interaction, both in retail and business to business insurance markets, as data.

Data is invaluable only if it's connected and acted upon. By integrating systems and data between departments, insurers can quickly identify when customers already have policies with them, perhaps for different insurance needs.

It enables companies to demonstrate this understanding and use it to expand their business base with each customer - becoming a valued adviser rather than a faceless provider of a service. It enables them to avoid bad business by increasing the likelihood of recognising certain patterns and behaviour.

Everybody wins - good customers get great service and costs are reduced as time-wasters are removed from the equation. CRM systems deliver the information that drives more informed decisions, improving operational efficiency and raising the quality of the customer base.

Daryl Henwood, CRM industry lead - financial services, Hitachi Solutions Europe