Lessons from COVID-19 disruption: preparing Australia’s motor vehicle insurance industry for the unpredictable

The COVID-19 pandemic caused worldwide disruption not only to business operations, but also people’s day-to-day lives. The mandatory lockdowns in Australia, and subsequent shutdown of many businesses, has significantly changed the way organisations work.  

The disruption forced businesses to find ways to reduce costs, seek government assistance, and pivot to digital solutions to effectively transform. For insurers, this meant that operations had to drastically change, with some businesses shifting to remote working. However, the pressure to continue securing sales and managing the knock-on effects of insolvent businesses and motoring claims remained.  

We uncovered two important lessons from the impact of COVID-19 that will better prepare insurers for the unpredictable future, to ensure business continuity in times of uncertainty:  

1. Technology plays a pivotal role in survival  

Ongoing disruption has forced many businesses to rapidly adopt digital transformation initiatives to support remote work. Motor vehicle insurers that adopted remote working practices realised the benefits and freedoms of employing a mobile workforce, including:  

  • reduced costs  

  • increased productivity  

  • access to a broader talent pool 

  • improved employee morale. 

A critical lesson from the COVID-19 crisis is the benefit that technology solutions can have on the bottom line for businesses, particularly when it comes to ensuring operational continuity. Deploying cloud-based solutions across insurance operations can help ensure that workers can continue supporting customers regardless of their location, while also streamlining communications with all relevant stakeholders.  

Investing in smart workflow management solutions, for example, can help insurers to better manage efficiency and process consistency of their workers. Technologies like EstImage Motor offer users more intelligent workload allocation, better communication and follow-up processes, more efficient inbuilt total loss functions, and standardised assessing processes. While many insurers may have rapidly integrated new solutions to survive ongoing business disruption, now is the time to invest in optimising these solutions, and incorporating this lesson into planning for future uncertainties. 

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2. Managing the wider risk landscape  

Businesses must plan to manage the wider risk landscape to mitigate the potential for operational disruption. They should put processes in place to ensure business continuity, should Australia face another crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. While such phenomena are unpredictable, it’s important to avoid complacency as we plan our roadmap to recovery for the wider industry.  

The coronavirus pandemic caused significant business disruption that needed to be accommodated. For motor vehicle insurers, this meant implementing new protocols and reviewing existing policies to ensure their business remained protected. An increase in COVID-19-related email scams, for example, forced insurers to integrate new cybersecurity solutions to better protect their systems and customer data. Similarly, government restrictions enforcing social distancing measures and limiting the number of people that can be in one location forced insurance companies to assess and revise their physical operations and communications.  

Extenuating circumstances like COVID-19 can have significant knock-on effects. For businesses, investing in new processes and technologies to facilitate seamless transitions to new ways of working in light of changing working environments can help to minimise adverse effects.  

The EstImage technology suite incorporates ideal solutions for insurers to minimise risk in the event of another unprecedented COVID-19-like event, including EstImage Motor and EstImage Connect (coming soon). 

EstImage Motor helps motor vehicle insurers remain operational during unexpected changes, while ensuring customers are still supported despite ongoing disruptions. Designed for in-house insurance assessors and independent assessors, EstImage Motor is a cloud-based assessing workflow management platform that transforms assessing with intelligent workload allocation, and automated communication and follow-up. EstImage Motor supports a wide variety of vehicle types, and enhances efficiency and process consistency for online or offline insurance assessments.  

EstImage Connect (coming soon) benefits insurance companies, fleet managers, and repairers that handle first notification of loss (FNOL). EstImage Connect simplifies the assessment and quoting process, by helping first responders to work from anywhere, connecting with customers to help them gather critical information and advise next steps quickly. This lets them give customers a more personalised service, and provides a much better customer experience. 

For more information on how EstImage can help help you better connect with your customers when they’re in need, and enhance your efficiency and process consistency, contact EstImage today.   

Damien Haenga