Ahead of the Insurance CX Awards 2024, we sat down with LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Insurance – valued sponsor of our ‘Service Provider of the Year’ Award. We asked how AI is affecting the insurance landscape in 2024, and what tech trends should we be looking out for, not to mention considering how LexisNexis optimises the customer experience as a central focus in their own products and service offerings…
Q. We’re delighted to have you on board as a sponsor for the ‘Service Provider of the Year’ category at the 2024 Insurance CX Awards! Why don’t we start by talking about LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Insurance, the work you do and the projects you’re working on / the clients you’re working with at the moment?
A. We’re equally delighted to sponsor the CX Awards, given that so much of what we do at LexisNexis Risk Solutions is focused on improving the insurance customer’s experience, from the point of application through to claim.
In a nutshell, as a data, advanced analytics and technology provider to the insurance market in the UK and Ireland, our solutions are focused on streamlining each part of the customer journey, helping insurance providers deliver accurate quotes, reduce their exposure to fraud, and understand more about the customer in order to do more for them.
We support the whole of the insurance market, giving insurers, MGAs and brokers the insights they need to make faster, more profitable decisions. To this end, our contributory database solutions such as the No Claims Discount (NCD) Module for LexisNexis® Policy History Motor have become fundamental to the functioning of the insurance market, providing an instant view of NCD history at the point of quote. We are also drawing valuable insights around the risks of cancellations and gaps in cover from this same database, through LexisNexis® Policy Insights.
The next evolution in contributory data will focus on claims history. LexisNexis® Precision Claims, set to launch in the Spring, will offer a single version of the truth for the claims history of the person and the asset to database contributors. They will even be able to cross-search home and motor claims, knowing that one can be predictive of the other.
All our solutions are developed in direct response to market need, not least the pressure on insurance providers to price fairly and accurately. The launch of LexisNexis® Vehicle Insights and LexisNexis® Vehicle Build are great examples given the challenges facing the motor insurance market, particularly with claims inflation and the emergence of new vehicle technologies and capabilities. We’re helping insurance providers better understand the risk of a vehicle based on its history and the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that it’s equipped with. And, like many of our data enrichment solutions, these products will evolve to keep pace with the changing dynamics of the UK car parc.
The same is true of the geospatial data intelligence that we provide to the insurance market. Our climate is changing, and the solutions we provide are changing also – with new insights around storms, location of trees, and basement flood risks.
We see it as our job at LexisNexis Risk Solutions to anticipate what’s coming, and to have data solutions ready to help the insurance market face those challenges head-on.
Q. How are you seeing AI streamline the customer experience in insurance?
A. There is no shortage of data in insurance. Consider the volume of customer data held by insurance providers in claims, marketing, underwriting – often held in different silos, sometimes in different sub-brands. AI and ML techniques can help make quick and accurate sense of that, helping insurance providers to operationalise all of this data, bringing it in at the right time to support quotes, price a risk, expedite a claim, flag possible fraud, or understand a cross-sell opportunity.
In household insurance for example, prefill and data validation solutions help make the whole application process quick and simple, improving pricing accuracy while cutting the time it takes for a customer to gain a quote. No more guessing at rebuild costs or property age. This is only possible through a huge amount of modelling, linking and AI-ML techniques, pulling all the data together to return accurate and up-to-date information on the person and property.
For businesses needing new commercial property space, AI can provide valuable insights around the footfall, crime rate, exposure to perils, portfolio risk aggregation or other local circumstances that increase risk to the property. Forewarned is forearmed, so access to these insights allow the customer to take preventative measures, all of which has the benefit of reducing the risk and potential claims costs.
In pricing, machine learning algorithms speed the identification of the most predictive attributes behind claims losses for use at point of quote. For example, cancellations and gaps in cover in motor insurance are predictive of claim, but insurance providers also need understand when those changes to policies occurred.
Q. What other tech trends are you witnessing in the insurance industry as we settle into 2024? How might these influence the customer experience as a consequence?
A. There’s little doubt that as we head into 2024, the economic outlook remains challenging[i]. But innovation comes out of difficult times. We are already seeing a rising hunger from insurance providers to understand more about their customers and their vehicles, homes and commercial properties. Innovative data enrichment solutions at the point of quote to claim will help them to evaluate risk, reduce claims, optimise pricing, and ultimately help ensure cash-strapped policyholders can continue to afford and buy the right cover.
More specifically from a tech perspective, we predict increasing reliance on geospatial data visualisation solutions such as LexisNexis® Map View to support fair pricing, and to allow insurance providers to alert their policyholders to impending risks from extreme weather events.
Q. How does LexisNexis Risk Solutions optimise CX in their products and service offering?
A. We are always searching for the next data insight that could improve the assessment of risk, and innovating to provide that solution – whether it’s gaining support for a market wide contributory database or delivering deeper insights on vehicles.
Ultimately, our people are encouraged and motivated to think like end users of insurance to see what innovative data assets might help them. Through nurturing innovative, inquisitive minds and constantly considering where we could improve, delivering exceptional CX is in our DNA.
Our people are our most important asset, and the root of our solutions and innovations. We offer them the freedom to find solutions for our customers and to think wider than just what’s directly in front of them. For example, we created The Innovation Station – a global initiative where employees can submit an idea that has the customer’s interests at heart, whether it be a new product, product enhancement, or just a better way of doing things.
The launch of LexisNexis Vehicle Insights is a perfect example, helping to validate key pieces of information about a vehicle to make the quote and claim journey simpler and pricing more accurate and fair. The solution was launched in less than nine months from concept, and the first customer was live within a month of launch.
It is when our employees are thinking about the intersection between their personal life, what we do as a business, the data assets that we own and our insurance provider customers, that we create true innovation to support excellent CX. This is particularly true of our in house data science team, who are constantly testing data and looking for improvements to help insurance providers price more accurately, reduce the risk of fraud, mitigate environmental risks, and manage claims.
Q. Which aspect of the Awards night are you most looking forward to?
A. Handing over the Service Provider Award will be a pretty special moment, but receiving an award ourselves might just eclipse that!
Q. If you could offer one piece of advice to the award winners, what would that be and why?
A. Sing your award win from the rooftops! This industry works so hard to improve the customer experience and recognition through awards such as the Modern Insurance Customer Experience Awards should be lauded and applauded.
[i] https://www.ft.com/content/a651dda1-89b0-448b-b624-e8d41592020e
To find out more about LexisNexis Risk Solutions, visit their website here.
