1. cur­rent situation

The bro­ker land­scape is char­ac­terised by two devel­op­ments. On the one hand, large bro­ker­age com­pa­nies are buy­ing up small­er ones. This lim­its the oppor­tu­ni­ties for small­er and medi­um-sized bro­kers on the mar­ket. The pres­sure on them is increas­ing. Sec­ond­ly, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is hav­ing an impact on offer­ings and access chan­nels to cor­po­rate and pri­vate clients. What does this mean for the future of the small­er group? Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion can rep­re­sent a con­flict of objec­tives — because it also changes cus­tomer needs and the way in which cus­tomers find out about offers. The use of dig­i­tal access chan­nels could, for exam­ple, lead to the risk of a reduc­tion in per­son­al con­tact with cus­tomers. They are already obtain­ing more infor­ma­tion via the inter­net and social media than they did a few years ago.

2. core ser­vices of an insur­ance broker

The core ser­vices of an insur­ance bro­ker can be cat­e­gorised as con­sult­ing, admin­is­tra­tion & sup­port, risk man­age­ment and com­par­isons. Through these basic ser­vices, the insur­ance bro­ker cre­ates con­crete added val­ue for the pol­i­cy­hold­er. This is a sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of ser­vices and tasks, as shown in the research work on mea­sur­ing cus­tomer value.

• Coun­selling: Cov­er­age analy­ses and con­cepts, safe­ty rec­om­men­da­tions.
• Admin­is­tra­tion & Sup­port:  Claims man­age­ment, answer­ing enquiries and shar­ing infor­ma­tion.
• Risk man­age­ment: Iden­ti­fy­ing and weigh­ing up risks.
• Com­par­isons:  Price and per­for­mance com­par­isons, show cov­er­age options.

3. cre­ation of dig­i­tal cus­tomer value

The stud­ies show: There is a so-called readi­ness gap among cus­tomers to receive offers dig­i­tal­ly. This means that those ser­vices that can be used dig­i­tal­ly with­out great effort gen­er­ate the same or greater cus­tomer val­ue than in an ana­logue dia­logue. The gap exists to vary­ing degrees for pri­vate and cor­po­rate customers.

Both pri­vate and cor­po­rate cus­tomers are will­ing to digi­tise. How­ev­er, pri­vate cus­tomers are more will­ing to obtain ser­vices via chats, apps and web plat­forms than cor­po­rate cus­tomers. The lat­ter are less will­ing to receive advice via dig­i­tal access chan­nels because cor­po­rate offer­ings are com­plex and require a lot of con­sul­ta­tion. The direct cus­tomer rela­tion­ship dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion remains very important.

There is usu­al­ly a healthy mix of ages among pri­vate cus­tomers: old­er peo­ple are less will­ing to digi­tise. So if you are active in the pri­vate cus­tomer seg­ment, you don’t have to wor­ry that your cus­tomers will only be dig­i­tal­ly ultra-com­pe­tent users.

Also in the area of Admin­is­tra­tion & Sup­port pri­vate cus­tomers are more will­ing to obtain the ser­vice via dig­i­tal access chan­nels. Dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion via a dig­i­tal plat­form is advan­ta­geous because pol­i­cy­hold­ers can save time. This rep­re­sents added val­ue — just like the cre­ation of Com­pare. This can be done quick­ly and effi­cient­ly using a dig­i­tal tool such as Sobra­do in con­junc­tion with suit­able bro­ker soft­ware. For pay­roll dec­la­ra­tions and stan­dard­ised muta­tions, how­ev­er, the use of dig­i­tal access chan­nels makes sense for cor­po­rate cus­tomers, as time and effort can be saved here.

Coun­selling remains an area in which dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion has lit­tle rel­e­vance. On the one hand, the stud­ies have shown that cus­tomer loy­al­ty is very impor­tant and has a sig­nif­i­cant val­ue from the out­set: This means that it devel­ops not with the times, but is rel­e­vant from the very first cus­tomer meet­ing. Face-to-face dia­logue is still extreme­ly impor­tant, as trust is con­veyed more strong­ly through interaction.

Trust is also extreme­ly impor­tant when weigh­ing up risks: it is there­fore worth­while to con­sid­er both types of cus­tomer as part of the risk man­age­ment process. Risk man­age­ment pri­mar­i­ly on the ana­logue contact.

4. sum­ma­ry: where to focus on dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion - and where not

For pri­vate cus­tomers: In future, the insur­ance bro­ker will be a plat­form provider with selec­tive, cus­tomer-con­trolled access to per­son­alised advice. The end cus­tomer should be giv­en the choice of dig­i­tal access to advice. This should pri­mar­i­ly take place in a face-to-face sit­u­a­tion. This cre­ates trust. How­ev­er, the advice does not have to be ana­logue. Soft­ware can be used to make this pos­si­ble in the dig­i­tal space.

For cor­po­rate cus­tomers: The insur­ance bro­ker is a prob­lem solver and should be spe­cialised in the fol­low­ing areas Coun­selling and Risk man­age­ment offer high­ly indi­vid­u­alised ser­vices. Intel­li­gent reports sup­port him in this. With Admin­is­tra­tion and Com­pare he can use dig­i­tal tools to effi­cient­ly cre­ate val­ue for cor­po­rate customers.