The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic causes insurers to change their business priorities
Alan Walker LLC’s latest survey highlights that many insurers are now looking to further support remote employee working and enhance customer communication and servicing channels
The survey, which asked 25 insurers working in the P&C, life, and health insurance industry about their thoughts regarding Covid-19 and business, revealed that many professionals did not feel that the pandemic was likely to end very soon. In fact, when asked about how confident they were that the pandemic would end by 1 January 2021, 54 per cent said they were either ‘not at all confident’, or ‘not so confident’, with 38 per cent saying they were ‘somewhat confident’. Only eight per cent of those asked asserted that they were ‘very confident’ or ‘extremely confident’ that the outbreak would be resolved by next year.
As such, Alan Walker’s survey found that insurers had switched their business priorities. Out of a list of 13 top business priorities, insurers top focuses were: further enabling or supporting remote employee working; making the size of the workforce more flexible; risk management and business continuity planning; IT resilience and cybersecurity; new or revised customer communication and servicing channels; and culture change.
“It is clear that insurers don’t believe the pandemic will be over soon, and that they are changing their priorities significantly as a result. But with so many areas requiring increased focus, they are going to be busy,” said Alan Walker, Principal of the company. “If insurers are going to give these areas the attention they say they deserve, they are going to have to figure out how to do that without other areas suffering.”