Client Retention Affected by Insurer Billing Practices

The latest results of a survey find that property/casualty carriers overwhelmingly believe that billing impacts customer retention. Guidewire Software, a provider of core systems to property/casualty insurers, conducted its Billing Market Survey, the second since July 2008.

Source: Source: Insurance Networking News | Published on June 14, 2010

The Guidewire report holds that a majority of respondents have difficulty creating new bill plans, and more than one-third cannot bill multiples policies on a single invoice, which impacts their ability to serve their customers. The survey statistics also confirm the shift toward direct bill away from the traditional agency bill method.

Analyzing survey responses from more than 40 P&C carriers in North America, survey highlights include:

• The majority of carriers surveyed believe that billing impacts customer satisfaction, and 88% believe that billing impacts customer retention

• Carriers report that the ability to offer flexible payment options to customers is critical, but 60% of respondents have difficulty creating new bill plans

• 35% of carriers polled are still unable to provide a single invoice for multiple policies

• 41% of insurers reported they are not confident their current billing systems will meet future needs

• Carriers continue to shift from agency bill to direct bill; 53% of carriers support agency bill today; 19% of the 53% planning to increase agency billing in the next three years; 34% plan to decrease agency billing in this same period

• 34% of carriers surveyed still house billing in their policy administration system, which is contributing to the difficulty creating new bill plans. Fifty-eight percent of this group plan to separate billing from policy in the future. The carriers that plan to keep billing in their policy administration system tend to be the smaller carriers.

The survey results indicate that respondents are more concerned now than they were in 2008 about the direct impact billing has to customer retention. Eighty-eight percent of carriers polled report that billing has a direct impact on customer retention. This is slightly higher than the 2008 results—most likely due to an increase of smaller carriers realizing the direct link between billing and customer retention.

Further, the challenge of uncollected earned premium is now more evenly dispersed between small, medium, and large carrier as compared to the 2008 survey.

Looking at the two surveys together, top challenges with current primary billing systems remain consistent between 2008 and 2010 survey findings:

• Difficulty and expense of system maintenance

• Minimal or no support for access by external agents—systems are not Web-based

• Difficulty of adding additional functionality due to previous custom changes

• Limited billing function built into policy administration system—not a true billing system

• Inability to quickly deploy new and updated billing plans—no change is easy to make

“We would like to thank the carriers who took part in our survey to measure the pulse of the industry relative to billing,” said Kimberly Morton, product marketing, Guidewire. “Today, most carriers recognize the impact billing can have on customer satisfaction and retention. Yet, a large percentage of carriers agree that their current billing system is too inflexible and limited in the functionality needed to support new customer and market demands.”