Drones making reconnaissance flights over storm-ravaged properties in Ohio. Telematics helping drivers control their car premiums. Virtual customer experience rooms. 

Such are some of the examples that property & casualty insurance companies in the United States are using to get their products to market before their competitors, according to a webinar in September dealing with taking on results-driven technology. 

“It’s a journey,” said Jane Possell, senior vice president and chief information officer at CNA Financial Corporation, based in Chicago. “So where do you start?” 

The classic approach is to construct a business case, which includes the hoped-for result and how much it will cost to achieve it. But Possell said the problem with this method is that people tend to focus then only on that one specific problem, even though others may exist. 

To deal with this, she said CNA employees and management try to think about the amount they spend on a certain piece of technology in terms of an “investment” rather than a project. 

And if getting a project to market faster than a competitor is the goal it’s best to think about all possible achievements in a single year, rather than take a multi-year approach, she said.  

Moving the needle 

This allows teams to see how they are moving the needle against those measures and what’s currently happening in the marketplace. 

Possell said people don’t need to defend each individual business case, but should think of projects in the context of overall results for a particular priority. As time goes on, CNA shifts more into what’s the most important priority and out of individual projects. 

“When you think about getting to market faster on key priorities this kind of approach to deciding how to spend money and tracking the results in the market gives you a lot more flexibility,” she said. 

At the end of any time period, employees can determine the outcome given the money that has been spent on it and how it now fits in with all other priorities. 

At Nationwide, which is both an insurer and a financial services company, its sights are focused on technology and how it works to help the company determine risks and settle claims. 

Digital solutions are important for Nationwide and some were ready for this year in particular, with major storms, including the August derecho with winds, rain and hail causing major damage in the U.S. Midwest, on top of hurricanes and deadly California forests fires. 

Amy Shore, EVP and Chief Customer Officer at Nationwide, said the development of digital solutions, such as the use of drones, came just in time to help deal with risk management and assessing damage in these cases. 

A professional drone operator is sent to a flight location to fly a “mission.” Once the flight has been completed, the data is processed by in-house specialists and available for viewing, sharing and downloading.  

Monitoring distracted driving 

Nationwide first used digital solutions, like telematics, for personal autos in 2011 and since then has racked up more than five billion miles worth of data through various methods, including a device installed in the vehicle, a mobile app, or directly from connected cars. Its commercial side was one of the first in the industry with a feature that monitors distracted driving that reports back to the business owner, said Shore.  

The company has also set up a virtual customer experience room to let employees walk through the journey of a customer. “It’s an example of how to bring a customer journey to life,” said Shore. 

She said Nationwide is also making an investment in its people, launching a five-year program to get associates to learn new skills.  

“We are seeing the appetite and the adoption [of digital solutions] accelerate and accelerate rapidly,” she said, including something as simple as two-way texting between the insurer and the customer to speed up processing. 

“So the appetite is there if the product works and the experience they have after that process works as well.” 

Scott Draeger, vice president of Customer Transformation at Quadrient, said companies need to ensure that the technology they’re working on fits in with what the company wants to accomplish. 

Otherwise, said Draeger, the company ends up with an expensive and unmanageable stack of technology. 

“You can’t support a quality training experience [like that,]” he said. “Understand whatever strategy you are using.”