Insurers Battle Against Companies ‘Born Digital’

Chat windows, faster policy statements, intuitive agent portals and robotic technologies are among the new generation of weapons insurers intend to use to compete with “born-digital” companies. These updates are necessary as young consumers expect near-instant responses from the brands — Amazon, Uber and Airbnb — with which they do business. In short, millennials have ratcheted up the customer service expectations quotient in every industry. Companies that do not rise to the challenge are going to be left behind, insurance executives and industry consultants have warned.

“Those (born-digital) companies are setting the expectations and those are the kind of customer service interactions that people are going to expect from Lincoln and other insurance companies,” Lincoln Financial president and CEO Dennis R. Glass told investors and analysts earlier this month.