The shockwaves from Covid, Ukraine and the Recession have hit personal line carrier bottom lines badly. Take Geico for example. The Berkshire Hathaway unit has long flourished by pursuing a consistent strategy: high levels of marketing spend plus cheaper direct channels leading to enviable premium and profitability growth. But things change: Covid, Recession and the ever-evolving direct channel risk environment have led to uncharacteristically high combined ratios for two years running.
So, what do carriers do when industry conditions sour? They cut: costs, staff, ‘marginal’ business that in today’s environment seems too risky – they cut it all and do so aggressively. The idea is to ‘batten down the hatches’ and ride out the storm so when conditions improve, they can loosen up again. But at least for risk selection this across-the-board approach can be very costly – a lot of good business ends up being thrown out with the bad. And given today’s high-quality data and available tools carriers don’t have to do the business equivalent of amputation, they can use micro-surgery instead.
The key is to get IT and programming out of the middle of risk selection and CX solution development at POS. There are tools available that make it far easier for business teams to identify, build, pilot and deploy a wide range of solutions quickly by themselves with only occasional support from IT. This allows carriers to make many more micro-changes quickly letting them pinpoint the business they no longer want without damaging similar business that is still attractive.
For the carriers who master this new data driven innovation skillset the motto will be don’t amputate, micro-target!
idFusionTM lets Personal Lines insurance business users identify and build highly targeted risk selection and virtual underwriting solutions in days without IT resources. Solutions that let you drive down loss ratios, deter fraud and unmanaged risks and reduce costs so you can convert more of the business you want. www.veracityid.com
