Despite Corona: Seamless digital insurance distribution home-to-home via video

Corona is currently forcing the economy to slow down to a minimum. Traditional insurance sales generate significantly less new business. And digital sales – especially of complex insurance products – are also reaching their limits during the crisis. However, Anivo’s solution enables the maintenance of a seamless advisory service right through to paperless closing. Learn more in this short report from the first days of insurance consulting in the home office.

In the current situation, traditional insurance consulting faces a problem worldwide. Insurance companies are busy finding solutions for extensions and withdrawals to help their clients financially over the coming weeks. Most insurance advisors and clients are in their home office. Existing digital solutions and channels (e.g. Skype) do not meet the necessary security standards and do not offer a complete replacement for the traditional personal consultation. Customers can be contacted and supported by telephone or e-mail – but in this situation, the generation of new business is limited or comes to a complete standstill.

Before Corona – insurance advice at bank branches

Swiss BLKB (Basellandschaftliche Cantonal Bank) has been offering its clients a complete bancassurance portfolio through its subsidiary Servicehub AG since 2018. The solution works very efficiently – with completion rates between 55 and 60%. Since 2018, 3,000 clients have purchased a policy. You can find out more in this article from December 2018.

Despite Corona – complete insurance advice and conclusion

As the corona crisis began to unfold, Anivo reacted quite early. Video consultations could be maintained continuously and have been taking place since March 11^th by the consultants in their offices at home.

Most bank clients are no longer advised in the bank branches, but also at home via video. A temporary handicap is that at present, bank advisors cannot attend appointments as usual. However, Anivo is working on a solution to enable conference calls between clients, insurance experts and bank advisors in the near future.

1. Positiv client feedback
   BLKB clients welcome the new form of insurance advice and react very positively to the offer. Many use the time they have to spend at home now for an insurance consultation via video without having to accept the risk of infection.
2. Clients ask more questions
   In the new consulting situation, clients ask more questions about the technology used and the background of the insurance solutions offered by the partners BLKB, Servicehub and Anivo.
3. Consistantly high acquisition rates
   The first results indicate that the completion rates in the changed setup remain constantly high. In the first few weeks they were at 55%.

Future outlook and assessment: Digitalisation boost

The increased risk awareness already mentioned would actually give insurance companies momentum, but they are currently unable to take advantage of it.

Corona is forcing the whole world to use already functioning digital services in order to be able to master everyday life – be it in leisure time or in the home office. This increases confidence in digitalisation and reveals its efficiency advantages. The willingness to make use of digital services even after Corona will trigger a digitalisation boost in all social groups.

In the future, it will therefore be groundbreaking, especially for insurance companies and banks, to be able to provide advice at any time, digitally and location-independently, IDD-compliant and in accordance with the highest possible IT security standards.