Angela Abbott: Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

DI: Digital Insurance did a study, and we found that the top digital transformation priority for insurers is improving customer experience, which is not terribly surprising. But I’m wondering, how do you think payments fit into the overall policyholder experience?

AA: Yeah. Well, Lisa, it’s huge. I mean, on the premium collection side, if you think about it, it’s the most regular touch point that you have with an insured. So you wanna be sure it’s a customer experience that they will enjoy.

When it comes to the claims payment, it’s the most sensitive interaction. It’s that moment of truth. I think you called it as the rubber hits the road. One of my customers recently, and she put it so eloquently, it’s making good on the promise of the premiums paid in.

One of the ways that I really love to see insurance carriers embracing this right now is is how they’re structuring their organizations even. So for example, you’re now seeing titles like VP of customer experience, VP of digital transformation. So it’s really great to see the market embracing it and and truly making it a priority.

DI: Absolutely. That is good news. But I’m wondering alright. So customer experience is improved. They want digital payments. What are the barriers? Why aren’t more insurers offering digital payments?

AA: I mean, change is scary most of the time. That’s probably the emotional response to it, but also in reality, it’s resources. In this moment in time, everyone’s being asked to do more with less. And there’s an assumption out there that I hear frequently, really, that the lift and the resource allocation is is similar to that of maybe implementing a core system that they might have just installed or upgrading on all the resistance around that. It’s real.

I spend a lot of time talking carriers off the ledge, really, and being able to just embrace what on the surface looks like a technology disruption. “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have the resources for that.” But a big key to that is really partnering with an organization that leverages a true SaaS platform. It’s more about preserving resources, not only to get modern, because that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everybody wants to get modern, but it’s it’s not about just that. It’s the out years. It’s about staying there and realizing the difference between a customization and a configuration.

Huge, right? And not having to lift a finger when new functionality is added. The last thing I’ll say about this, and and it’s a hard thing to do, but really to ask yourself, what is the cost of doing nothing? I mean, what do we stand to lose if we don’t innovate?

Download our ebook, How to Disrupt without Disruption: An Innovative Guide for Insurance Carriers, to learn more about how insurers can deliver instant, intuitive, and personalized experiences without expensive and time-consuming digital transformations.