By Martyn Mathews, VP, personal and commercial lines, insurance, U.K. and Ireland, LexisNexis Risk Solutions
When customer data is stored in multiple silos, the same customer could appear multiple times across different databases within the group without any link identified. It risks become outdated, can create a poor customer experience, lead to inaccurate pricing at renewal and hinder the insurance provider’s ability to ensure the customer has the best product for their needs. This will all be front of mind for the insurance sector right now.
The upcoming Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Consumer Duty rules and guidelines aim to put customers at the forefront of financial products. As mentioned in our last article for Actuarial Post, the FCA will be measuring whether consumers are paying a price for products and services that represents fair value and they will be making sure that customers are sold and receive products that have been designed to meet their needs . Those insurance providers that have taken steps to solve their CDM problem will be at a distinct advantage.
Furthermore, without the single customer view, insurance providers risk missing the cross-sell and upsell opportunities present within their own databases and can waste precious marketing budgets due to poor segmentation or the one communication going out multiple times to the same customer. This is all aside from the risk of fraud which can arise when customer validation processes are hindered by the lack of a consolidated view of each customer.
The benefits of unlocking and consolidating customer data are clear - when an individual approaches for a quote, or the insurance provider needs to calculate a renewal or FNOL is triggered, that process can be handled swiftly and appropriately for the individual concerned, in the confidence that any past relationship with the individual has been factored into the workflow. Communications are more targeted, timely and relevant.
The power to offer that level of service comes down to creating the single customer view based on all the previous touchpoints the customer may have had with the brand - quotes, renewals, claims, marketing. Insurance providers then have a comprehensive and accurate representation of a customer’s history, at any stage in their dealings with the brand. It also means they can apply a consistent method of matching of customer data across multiple databases.
The problem is that for insurance providers, creating that single customer view is difficult due to the complexity of matching records where an address or name may have changed. This is where Linking and Matching solutions such as LexID® for Insurance offers a solution. In essence, it finds common threads across customer records by pulling on a wide range of data sets, comprising circa 2.6bn records, including public and insurance policy history data.
By linking and matching together multiple customer records, one consolidated ‘golden’ record is created that can be used to support all parts of the policy lifecycle, from marketing through to claim. It also means insurance customers can be quickly distinguished as being known to the business or new so that they can be assigned a unique identifier. This then forms the basis for building a more comprehensive single customer view to help pricing decisions, identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities and improve customer data accuracy and communication.
Insurance providers are under more pressure than ever to maximise the data they already hold. Linking and matching data using a unique identifier can help them make sense and make better use of customer data across all parts of their business. They can offer a smoother customer journey, more accurate pricing and deliver products and services better suited to the needs of their customers.
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