A Wake-Up Call On Claims

Digitizing the claims process has been one of the shining examples of innovation in insurance — or so it seemed. But J.D. Power threw some cold water on that notion in a report released last week.

‘The industry is lagging far behind financial services and utilities providers when it comes to the digital customer experience,’ according to the J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Claims Digital Experience Study.

‘Adoption remains stubbornly low. During the course of this year, just 40% of claimants interacted with an estimator via digital channels and only 47% made a claim via a website.’

Martin Ellingsworth, executive managing director of P&C insurance intelligence at the market research firm (and a longtime contributor to ITL), said that ‘the insurance claims process has not really evolved beyond the launch of digital photo estimation three years ago.’

He said the heavy investments that insurers are making in straight-through processing will enable more adoption of digital claims management, ‘but, right now, there is still a great deal of room for improvement.’