In this final article in our series of three on Pet Insurance, Madhur Virmani, Director, Solution Consulting – EMEA, shines a light on the differentials that Duck Creek offers to pet insurers in the market.
It is anticipated that the pet insurance industry in the UK will see accelerated growth, with some estimates suggesting that by 2025 the sector will generate £1.5 billion gross premium per year.
Cat and dog ownership in the UK grew by around 63% and 39% respectively since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With 3.2 million households acquiring a new pet and 70% of dogs and 84% of cats in the UK currently uninsured this remains a largely untapped market.
For this expanding class of business, we look at how Duck Creek can make a positive difference for insurers and policyholders of pet insurance, and how these benefits are all underpinned by our core principles – accelerate speed-to-market, improve operational efficiency and deliver excellent customer experiences across the policy and claims management lifecycle, which is so important for this class of business.
More than just premium
Understandably, any pet insurance product must appeal to the very personal experience of owning a pet and not expect that the lowest premium will clinch the deal with the policyholder. Pet safety, health and tracking should also be part of the policy benefits. Insurers must think carefully about their offering and how people share their lives with dogs, cats or other pets, to innovate and improve the overall experience to secure consumer uptake and in turn, market share.
Insurers must look at launching a new pet insurance that is quickly aligned to consumers’ holistic needs that include standard coverage for pet accident and sickness, online veterinary advice and service, pet tracking via smart collars, and a pet vaccination plan. This enables clients to have a single product that meets all their pet care needs.
Embedding Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the underwriting process compares pet activity data with benchmarks of similar breeds and combines them with rating information from industry sources, such as Verisk, to enable accurate pricing for an individual pet at the time of quoting. For claims settling it can predict an accurate reserve based on the type of illness, or even predict a possible customer churn. All in all, embedding AI within underwriting and claims processes gives insurers the digital advantage to streamline operations, improve customer experience and reduce cost across both these business functions.
It’s what we do
The Duck Creek OnDemand platform can enable pet insurers with the opportunity to quickly go-to-market and gain a competitive advantage. In order to realize this, Duck Creek has invested in three key areas:
- Out of the box content: This includes pre-built content for all four standard Pet Insurance plans including lifetime cover, time limited, accident only and maximum benefit. In addition, the ability to offer embedded coverage for protection of smart collar devices with predefined dashboards for pet activity and comparison with the benchmark for the same breed to improve renewal underwriting is also available.
- Renowned partner ecosystem: A well established partner ecosystem and pre-built integrations to enrich pet related underwriting and pricing information, real time pet tracking, together with online veterinary and vaccination support services. This enables straight-through-processing and provides a single window of service for policyholders.
- Intelligent user journeys: Seamless customer and agent experience offered with pre-built digital journeys for sales, policy service and claims through digital channels of choice having a mobile first design.
The above pet insurance functional capabilities are supported by our low code configuration tool with an ability to deliver a single point of change across LOB’s and channels delivered through a SaaS application and operating model. The product inheritance capability offered by our DCOD platform enables insurers to copy and make changes to an existing product and launch new ones within weeks.
With economic uncertainty and the cost of household living increasingly impacting consumers, the key to optimum customer experience is having simple bundled products and seamless interactions with their insurer. Customers need to see the value-add and benefits to make an informed decision about the product purchase. The key is for insurers to make this available for their policyholders and Duck Creek is leading the way.
Untapped potential
The UK continues to experience huge growth in pet ownership, and there is potential for the pet insurance market to grow. Insurers need to quickly update their systems to tap this market. Technology, enabling speed-to-market now makes it possible for insurers to launch new coverage within a few weeks and not months, offers accuracy in underwriting and pricing via advanced analytics to improve underwriting margins, together with enhanced customer experience for policyholders to improve retention.
Now is a great time to consider entering this class of business, and building it on Duck Creek OnDemand. Learn more here.
Also, check out our other articles in this three part blog series on Pet Insurance:
How insurtech can help us better look out for our pets
