by Ari Katz, bolt President

Disruption is everywhere in today’s insurance industry. With insurtech startups seeking to approach insurance in new ways and established carriers investing heavily in artificial intelligence and other tools, technology is upending everything from how carriers reach customers to how they conceptualize insurance itself.

bolt’s Insurance Exchange helps insurers navigate disruption in a productive way, combining the best of new technologies with deeper insights into the needs of both carriers and customers.

Disruption: The New Normal for Insurance

When insurers discuss disruption, they often focus on changes and challenges facing their own businesses and processes. Yet disruption in insurance affects everyone whose life and work brings them into contact with the insurance industry.

Digital transformation is “forcing radical change upon corporate culture, products and processes, customer relations and relations with the sector’s various competitors,” writes University of Pisa associate professor Antonella Cappiello in a January 2020 article in the International Journal of Business and Social Science. Insurers, their non-insurance partners, customers and other stakeholders are all feeling the effects of disruption.

Among the many forms of disruption in the insurance industry is the development of new relationships, particularly relationships with non-insurance businesses whose work is nevertheless related to insurance or compatible with insurers’ goals. For example, some insurers have developed partnerships with automakers, because automobile purchases and auto insurance coverage purchases go hand in hand for the vast majority of customers.

Technology that allows insurers to foster these partnerships, such as the bolt Insurance Exchange, provides a foundation to reach business goals while also improving customer experience and relationships with insurance carriers.

Democratizing Insurance Distribution

The bolt Insurance Exchange focuses on the customer experience. Its goal is not merely to consolidate carriers and connections, but to help MGAs, agents and brokers control what they offer to end users and to make better decisions based on access to vast stores of data.

By taking this customer-focused, big-data approach, the bolt Insurance Exchange improves efficiency for its users. Customers seeking insurance receive access to more insurance products, regardless of their geographic location. They also receive better advice and guidance, since the agents and brokers with whom they work have access to better information.

Carriers, meanwhile, find value in the fact that the bolt Insurance Exchange drives an ever-increasing flow of insurance traffic. As carriers add products to the platform, they optimize their chances to place those products in front of precisely the right purchasers at precisely the right time. Rather than hunting down the ideal customer, carriers can allow the platform, guided by agents and brokers, to identify the right customer from those already present.

By making it easier to get insurance products into customers’ hands, the bolt Insurance Exchange allows carriers to focus on creating the best products possible. The Insurance Exchange ecosystem shoulders the burden of sharing those products with customers and helping develop customer loyalty.

Expanding Insurance Sales into New Realms

In addition to democratizing insurance distribution along existing pathways, the bolt Insurance Exchange also helps insurers reach new customers in new ways.

Traditionally, insurance companies handled the placing of insurance coverage. Carriers or intermediaries might receive leads from non-insurers like auto sales professionals or realtors, but these parties did not participate in the actual placement of coverage.

Today, however, tools like the bolt Insurance Exchange make it possible for non-insurers to play a closer role in connecting end users to carriers. Through the use of APIs and related technologies, prospective insureds can address their coverage needs at the point of purchase, without leaving the platform.

For insurance customers, the experience is one of less friction and frustration. Rather than making a purchase or signing a lease and then seeking insurance, customers can take care of the necessary coverage on the spot. Carriers and intermediaries can choose which data to include or exclude while examining risk or generating quotes.

The platform also provides the opportunity to cross-sell or upsell more easily by tailoring recommendations to specific insurance seekers. By analyzing data entered by the end user, information provided by intermediaries and the vast data collections available to the software, the bolt Insurance Exchange can provide recommendations for coverage that complements the coverage being sought or that addresses needs the customer may not be considering in the moment.

The bolt Insurance Exchange thus creates new opportunities for interconnectedness, disrupting insurance in a way that brings customers, intermediaries, carriers and companies outside the industry closer together. The result is more efficient work for insurance industry participants and a better experience for the customer.

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