What’s Your Insurance App-titude?

New Mobile Insurance Apps

With four of the top P&C carriers now offering consumer apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, you can’t look at smartphones as expensive toys for posting tweets and uploading YouTube videos any more.

A growing number of financial services companies see smartphones as a brand new channel that’s key to reaching a growing group of consumers.

Look Who’s in the Apps Race

About 18 months after the first major retail bank released apps to help accountholders check balances, pay bills and model loans on their smartphones, several leading personal auto carriers have followed suit.

With new apps claimants can use smartphones to report an auto accident, upload photos from the scene and pinpoint their location for wrecker services. While most of the new apps are related to the claims process, an innovative new app from USAA even lets policyholders pay their premium by simply uploading a photo of a check.

CSC App for iPhone and BlackBerry

CSC’s first insurance app for policy inquiry can be downloaded to your smartphone at the iTunes and BlackBerry Apps Stores and as well as CSC’s site http://mobile.csc.com (user name and password: gsachar). This new app allows consumers to view life insurance policy information. This includes billing information and history, policy values and limits, and contact information.

We are using a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to expose business services within our applications to Web applications. By creating adapters to CSC’s policy administration and claims systems, we help customers create real-time processes over their Web portals and distribution networks. The smartphone is simply the next big distribution channel.

According to a forecast by Wireless Expertise, mobile phones are expected to outnumber PCs worldwide by 4 to 1 in the next few years. Likewise, the mobile app market is expected to grow from $4.7 billion in 2009 to $16.6 billion in 2013.

Mobile apps are more about thought leadership and market awareness than making and saving money right now. Mobile initiatives offer a way to give your prized customers a higher level of service and self-service, as well as target a demographic market segment of consumers who are digital natives.

This segment expects instant gratification through self-service and takes mobile devices for granted. With the major carriers entering the space in the last 9 months, imagine what insurance apps will be available a year from now. You can be sure that plenty of apps will target insurance agents — and making it easy to place business with carriers.

Extending Self-Service to Agents and Policyholders

A number of agents are already using smartphones to stay connected with the office for email, contact lists and calendars. Why not give them access to up-to-date information to help them answer questions on the spot? Even better, why not notify them when policies are coming up for renewal to help kick off new sales calls?

If previous behaviour is any indication, independent agents tend to flock to companies that are easier to do business with. In addition to cornering the market on convenience, carriers can use the self-service capabilities of apps to drive down costs.

Imagine, in the workers’ compensation market, the potential value of a managed care app that gets injured employees back to work sooner. An app with a checklist of steps toward rehabilitation, with locations and contacts of the nearest approved medical providers, could help keep claimants on track — and keep carriers up-to-date on their progress.

Many business owners, particularly those constantly on the move, are already married to smartphones. Why wouldn’t agents and carriers engage them on their devices? Mobile services such as real-time quoting, instant messaging and video conferencing have the potential to enrich relationships and ensure their insurance company is just a screen tap away.

Using Mobile and Cloud Technology

Behind the scenes, the technology making these apps possible is nothing new. It’s the result of a convergence of advancements over the past decade: easier-to-use hardware, SOA architecture and uniform standards for exchanging data between systems.

By creating special adapters to your back-end systems, you can identify virtually any type of service. This includes paying a bill, adding a vehicle to a policy or ordering a new insurance card.

The exciting thing about these apps is that they’re ideal for implementing with cloud computing. In fact, we’re developing CSC’s new insurance apps on server space from Amazon.com. It’s secure, fast and cost is based on usage. So, even though you may feel like you’re being forced to support a whole new channel, the good news is you can do it quickly and cost-effectively.

Also, there’s no limit to the ways these apps can be used — and reused. For example, the same app for comparing rates between insurance companies could be downloaded to an individual’s smartphone. It could be featured by a blogger writing about ways to lower insurance costs. In turn this is picked up on many Facebook pages by people who want to share it with their friends.

The exciting aspect of the smartphone phenomenon is that it combines mobile technology, the Internet and social networking on one device. Unlike the early days of the the internet, apps have the power to turn viral overnight — and set the standard for all apps that follow.