Learning Launch – Insurance Company

Challenge

I am the manager of the Pricing & Underwriting line of an insurance company and our challenge is  to increase Property insurance sales by improving the sales process.

The scope of the project is related to the subscription and specifically to the risk inspection process.  Inspectors, underwriters, commercial executives and clients participate in this process.

Our company works with internal inspectors and with several external suppliers to whom cases are  assigned according to business rules. Each inspector coordinates a visit with the client, where a risk  report is prepared that is subsequently reviewed by the underwriter, who decides to approve or  reject the insurance contract.

We focused on which part of the process we could improve, or which part of the process was the  most problematic. The project was accomplished with the available resources, with no additional  financing, only the time and commitment of the project team members were available. As a goal,  there was a maximum period of 30 days to implement an experiment and have conclusions to  continue advancing.

Selection

Our team has had several experiences developing innovative projects without a formal  methodology. Over time we have created our own way of doing things and we trust that “Learning  Launch” will be a very good contribution to create a simple, fast and cheap prototype that tackles  the problem in a good way.

Application

For our first “Learning Launch” we focused on the different phases of the inspection process. We  recently had a training on the AGILE methodology that we decided to use. We defined 1 weekly  sprint, where we were able to review in detail tangible progress that helped get the experiment  going.

We wanted to focus on which part of the process did not add value in order to improve it. We  identified the inefficiency that meant that the inspection process depended entirely on the  feasibility of moving to the property and the agendas of external and internal inspectors. We  assumed that the more effective the inspection process, the more sales we would have.

In this phase we were able to create a prototype where we did not depend on the physical  movements of the inspectors, nor on external companies. We devised a video call to contact the  client so that they could remotely show us the property. A short protocol for the call was created  and we selected an internal person with the necessary technical knowledge. We reviewed the  assumptions and then selected 10% of the cases to do the experiment.

After this, we interviewed inspectors, underwriters and customers, who gave us an excellent  assessment of the prototype.

For our second “Learnig Launch” we devised a chatbot solution for the client to self-serve. We  thought it was a good option to use more technology to improve the process and we thought that  we could save costs. The first week we designed a standard questionnaire where the client uploaded  photos and videos. The second week we asked for IT collaboration to do the flow design on  WhatsApp. We tried using it on 10% of the cases and found that it didn't work. The results of the  experiment showed that the issue of closeness and interaction with the inspector was very  important to our clients. They found that the WhatsApp chatbot was complicated and that it did not  answer the diversity of questions that were generated in the process.

After 3 months of our first experiment we decided   to scale the first prototype, reaching a total of  85% of all inspections, increasing the sales win rate by 16%, achieving significant savings of up to  75% in the costs involved and a decrease in the average process time from 2 weeks to 48 hours.

Insight and Approach

During the “Learning Launch” we were able to identify important assumptions along with the design  of low-cost experiments. For the creation of the design, the AGILE methodology helped us organize  and limit the times of the prototype. During this process, the degree of support from different areas  of the company to launch into the unknown was very important. We were able to appreciate  contributions the different points of view and expert knowledge that they possess on the different  processes.

The results obtained were surprising, after making a successful prototype we built another one that  did not work. The latter gave even more strength to the first prototype, being able to detect the real  needs of the client by deciding to scale it and being able to exceed the solutions provided by our  competition.

In the future we will continue to use the “Learning Launch” tool to identify the wow zone. This tool  helped us exceed our expectations and realize what really works with the client.

We are currently starting to prototype based on our new knowledge in another line of business  (motor insurance), we are going to follow a similar methodology and incorporate our new “Learnig  Launch” into other areas.

