As UK insurers grapple with rising claims costs and escalating premiums, the pressure on onboarding processes has never been greater. Motor claims payouts surged by 18% last year, while British drivers faced premium hikes of over a third, outpacing the rest of Europe. At the same time, home insurance renewal quotes soared by 42%, leaving insurers scrambling to adapt. Given these tribulations, the efficiency and effectiveness of insurance onboarding has become crucial.
FinTech Global‘s Harry Slade sat down with a host of insurance industry experts to delve into the current state of insurance onboarding and examine the key trends shaping the market today.
The esteemed list of corporate leaders included Sebastian Gruber, co-founder and CEO of hi.health, Osnat Yanushevsky Yacoby, Chief Customer Officer at Earnix, and Efrat Marmur, VP Marketing at Air Doctor.
Facing onboarding challenges head-on
Onboarding in the insurance industry presents a complex landscape, as companies must balance the needs of diverse clients with internal operational demands.
One of the primary challenges insurers face is managing varied client requirements while ensuring a streamlined process for both internal teams and policyholders.
Insurers often need flexible workflows that can adapt to different client needs, but without creating friction in their internal systems.
Air Doctor’s Marmur delved into how the company bats away the challenge, commenting, “We establish regular check-ins to identify and resolve issues proactively. This structured yet flexible approach reduces friction. It also allows us to tackle potential clunky issues early and adapt our process to ensure smooth transitions for our partners.”
On top of this, many insurance companies are already stretched thin with limited resources and have multiple competing priorities, which makes it difficult to allocate time and attention to implementing new solutions.
As a result, the process of updating or integrating new tools can be delayed, leading to added complexity and potential disruptions in daily operations.
Ultimately this means modernising their onboarding operations can be burdensome – or even impossible. According to a study from Right International, a mere 28% of companies are actually investing enough time and effort in the onboarding process to make a significant impact on the business, with much of this due to the aforementioned capacity struggles, with resource constraints causing major issues.
hi.health looks to face these issues head-on by tailoring their solution to their client specific needs.
Gruber explained, “We help insurance companies to improve member and provider experience in the claims process, while achieving cost savings. Integrating new systems into existing core processes can be daunting for insurers, often leading to delays and resource constraints. To overcome these hurdles, we actively engage with our clients to understand their unique challenges and tailor our onboarding solutions accordingly. By providing dedicated support and resources during the integration phase, we help them navigate these complexities and ensure a seamless transition to our payment platform.”
Regulatory compliance and data security are also top concerns during onboarding, as insurers must navigate complex regional and company-specific regulations.
Earnix’s Osnat Yanushevsky Yacoby explained how firms can look to their solutions to circumvent these issues.
She remarked, “Navigating regulations and compliance, whether regional or company-specific, can be complex. Earnix provides robust governance controls that empower customers to configure user and group permissions, ensure data security in a virtual environment, and restrict access to specific features.”
According to ComplyAdvantage, conflicts can also arise in the compliance space between the transaction teams, who focus on securing business and managing client relationships, and the compliance teams, responsible for ensuring that all onboarding and monitoring requirements are met.
This can create a disconnect, as the pressures to meet compliance standards can slow down the process, making it more difficult for transaction teams to close deals quickly.
Clients can also become frustrated with the extensive time and effort required to meet anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations, which are often a significant part of the onboarding process.
These regulatory requirements can create a cumbersome experience for clients, who may feel overwhelmed by the complexity and length of the process. In some cases, the severity of the onboarding experience can even deter potential clients from engaging with the insurer altogether, causing a loss of business.
However, companies like Earnix can mitigate this through their bespoke offerings.
Customers may be hesitant to embrace change, often preferring to replicate outdated processes they have developed over time instead of adopting best practices,” said Yanushevsky Yacoby. “By collaborating closely with our customers, we can effectively demonstrate the true value and ease of using Earnix solutions, helping them transition to more efficient workflows.”
Streamlining the onboarding process
Streamlining the onboarding process can significantly enhance efficiency, improve user satisfaction, and reduce friction between insurers and their clients.
By simplifying complex workflows, insurers can accelerate the time it takes to bring clients on board, ensuring quicker integration into their services.
A smoother onboarding experience allows insurers to focus more on delivering value to clients and less on managing operational bottlenecks, which ultimately improves both the customer experience and business outcomes.
One key way to streamline onboarding is through cross-departmental collaboration. This is the method utilised by Air Doctor, a firm making waves in the travel insurance market.
The Israel-based company has found tremendous success, recently bagging $20m in its Series B.
When quizzed as to how they managed to streamline their onboarding process, Marmur explained, “At Air Doctor, we focus on creating a seamless onboarding experience with our insurance partners by fostering cross-departmental communication. In addition to prioritising continuous support and training – which also includes marketing support and materials – we emphasise practical, tailored onboarding with our insurance and assistance partners. To put it simply, we’ve seen the most success through a hands-on approach.
“In some cases, we integrate initial training sessions to align with our partner’s workflows and host weekly educational meetings to ensure continuous learning. This strategy simplifies processes and helps our partner’s internal teams quickly adopt and integrate our service into existing workflows. Additionally, we encourage regular cross-departmental communication between all necessary departments to ensure quicker feedback and adaptation, fostering a strong foundation for streamlined onboarding.”
Another potential avenue is to minimise the integration effort required from insurers. Providing comprehensive, easy-to-use tools and resources can significantly simplify the process, reducing the burden on insurers’ internal teams. By offering step-by-step guidance throughout the entire onboarding journey, insurers can ensure a smoother, more transparent experience for their partners.
This is the approach taken by Vienna-based InsurTech, hi.health. Gruber commented on the nuances of their approach, saying, “By leveraging intuitive interfaces and automated workflows, we can significantly reduce time-to-value for our clients, allowing them to focus on what matters most: serving their members.”
Earnix adopts a comprehensive approach to customer onboarding that focuses on delivering measurable results and ensuring a smooth, hands-on experience from the outset. Each customer is paired with an expert implementation team that works closely with them during the initial setup phase, helping to tailor the system to their unique needs. This collaboration ensures that users gain practical, on-the-job experience right from the start, enabling them to integrate the solution seamlessly into their operations.
As the onboarding process progresses, Earnix places a strong emphasis on empowering clients through intensive training.
The goal is to foster self-sufficiency by the end of the project, with a “train the trainer” model that enables key staff members to become internal experts. This approach not only increases user proficiency but also helps to build long-term competency across the organisation.
Yanushevsky Yacoby explained, “At Earnix, each customer is also paired with a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM). The CSMs are introduced at the start of the onboarding journey, ensuring a seamless transition from the implementation phase. Customers will receive continuous support from their dedicated
“CSMs coordinates training updates, addresses ongoing concerns, facilitates functional health checks to review best practice approach, and manages upgrades to maximize system utilisation. Earnix also provides comprehensive project implementation practices, user guides for integration, data management, modeling, and product documentation. Our continually updated knowledge base is accessible to all users, alongside educational courses and training programs designed to facilitate ongoing learning and success.
“This process not only ensures efficiency but also plays a crucial role in creating savvy customers. By fostering a better understanding of our procedures, we facilitate healthier change management routines, ultimately benefiting both our team and our clients.”
Looking ahead
When turning our head to the future, insurance onboarding seems poised to be shaped by increasingly advanced technologies and a greater emphasis on personalisation and automation, as is the case in all walks of life.
Certainly, that was the view of Air Doctor’s Marmur, who remarked, “As insurers continue to adopt AI-driven tools, machine learning, and data analytics, the onboarding process will become faster, more efficient, and more tailored to individual client needs.”
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