According to Michael Boeke, vice president of product management for payments at CCC Intelligent Solutions, “payments can look pretty different depending on where a carrier is in terms of their digital journey.”
According to him, carriers that are just starting their digital transformations are still sending enormous amounts of paper checks compared to those that are farther ahead.
“The carriers that are sending out a lot of paper checks are still relying on legacy vendors, banks, and payments providers, and they’re likely incurring some hidden costs caused by their systems not being well connected to the rest of their claims lifecycle,” Boeke said.
Bringing Complex Fund Flows Together
The difficulty for carriers with less sophisticated digital infrastructure is in simplifying the actual movement of payments (and claims) across the back end technologies of various stakeholders in order to establish more linked contact points. The difficulty of doing all leads to friction and pain sites that fall into three categories.
Boeke stated that “we’re living in a world where we’re all used to being able to settle up electronically with apps on our phones when it comes to pretty much everything in our everyday life,” adding that “the policyholder experience suffers first and perhaps foremost.”
Consumers are now expecting the same seamlessness from insurance.
Additionally, the trade partners of the carriers, such as the repair facilities and lenders, want a more seamless transactional process.
These stakeholders have often had to rely on phone conversations and emails to begin and follow payments since there is so much paper involved, according to Boeke.
Last but not least, integrating with payment providers may be a big project that requires a lot of time and money.
