Choosing an insurance provider is a major decision for policyholders – and who among us can say they don’t understand? Every insured wants to know they’re safeguarding their health, property, or business with a reputable, reliable organization that will take care of them if and when the time comes.

That’s where AM Best comes in. Just as the Better Business Bureau helps certify legitimate, successful businesses, AM Best is the world’s first credit-rating agency specifically for the insurance industry. Their rating services assess the creditworthiness of thousands of insurance companies worldwide and provide policyholders with insight into an insurance company’s ability to pay claims, debts, and more across a number of categories.

Most recently, in March 2020, AM Best developed scoring criteria for a notable new category: insurance innovation. The agency stated it believes innovation is “crucial for the long-term success of insurers” and that an insurers’ “innovation capabilities will impact their strength and solvency.” This score is the outcome of both an input and output score. Input scores are based on leadership, culture, resources, processes, and structure while output scores are based on results and levels of transformation. After this scoring is complete, insurance organizations are then given one of five possible grades: leader, prominent, significant, moderate, and minimal.

The addition of innovation to AM Best’s rating criteria is incredibly telling, considering that maintaining a high score directly impacts a providers’ ability to attract new business. At InvoiceCloud, we understand that this is a mission-critical situation, which is why our online billing and payment solution works to improve your organization’s innovation score without your organization lifting a finger.

Let’s dive into 3 areas of judging criteria that are covered just by implementing the InvoiceCloud platform.

Criteria 1: Robust Product Design

How InvoiceCloud Helps: Deliberate user interface functionality inside the payment route

While not every policyholder makes a claim, everyone must pay premiums to maintain their policies – that’s why the payment experience is the most critical policyholder touchpoint. The results of this experience not only keep your organization financially on track but can also determine your policyholder’s satisfaction.

InvoiceCloud’s billing platform is designed to maximize the payment experience by engaging the policyholder at every step. No matter how a policyholder prefers to pay, they’ll have a seamless and quick experience on the payment route of their choice. Additionally, we take the chance to promote quick and easy self-service enrollment all along the payment route, including on confirmation screens, within payment reminders, and beyond.

Finally, InvoiceCloud always offers insurers the latest and greatest functionality and features with our Software as a Service (SaaS) technology. Additions to the platform are rolled out automatically to all users, much like Netflix or Expedia, so your organization is always at the cutting-edge of innovation without doing a thing.

Criteria 2: Lower Expense Ratio

How InvoiceCloud Helps: Driving self-service and e-adoption

Self-service routes enable customers to complete an action (in this case, payments), without any staff assistance. By encouraging policyholders to adopt these routes, your organization can significantly conserve resources; for example, increasing the number of policyholders enrolled in electronic billing (a.k.a. e-billing or paperless billing) can offset the skyrocketing cost of paper for your organization.

At InvoiceCloud, we understand that the more self-service adoption an insurance organization sees, the more time and funds it can conserve. That’s why our platform is strategically designed to drive policyholders to these routes, make it easy to enroll, and even easier to utilize. Through this thoughtful design, we routinely drive 2-3x higher adoption of self-service routes (i.e. online payments, automatic payment enrollment) than any other solution on the market.

Criteria 3: Better Customer Retention

How InvoiceCloud Helps: Improving the policyholder experience and communications

Policyholders today have high expectations for service experiences and aren’t afraid to switch insurers if they’re unsatisfied. In fact, research shows that satisfied policyholders are 80% more likely to renew their policies than unsatisfied insureds. Because of this, the success of any insurance organization depends on whether or not it can retain existing policies.

Determining if your organization is in the clear starts with this question: does your organization offer an easy-to-use, frictionless policyholder experience? If you’re wondering what this type of experience could look like, here are a few examples of how the InvoiceCloud platform retains more policies with frictionless experiences:

• AutoPay: Policyholders can easily enroll in AutoPay to take the weight off of their shoulders and increase your organization’s level of on-time collections.
• Intelligent reminders: Reminders sent via text, email, and other routes notify policyholders of their upcoming bills and allow them to make a payment right from the notification.
• Communicative payment channels: The InvoiceCloud platform is designed to enable communication between our payment channels. For example, if you change your credit card information on an automated phone line, it will automatically update across all platforms. This reduces friction so the policyholder experience is simple and seamless.

How else can your organization improve its AM Best score?

By implementing the uniquely designed InvoiceCloud platform, your policyholder experience is sure to stand out from the rest. That means an improvement in your organization’s retention rates, its ability to attract new customers, and its AM Best innovation score.

To learn more about essential behaviors for successful insurance organizations, download a copy of our newest ebook, The New Insurance Billing Best Practices.

Questions on how else InvoiceCloud can improve your AM Best score? Schedule a call with one of our industry experts today.