However, some life insurance and pension providers are struggling with the experience they offer with the restriction of single channels and not 
being able to be inclusive of customer needs by not using digital delivery and personalisation.
This is a factor that can limit business performance and increase compliance risks.
A recent survey conducted by Experian shows that just 3% of customers are loyal to their insurers. This amplifies that providers need to increase their engagement and demonstrate to existing, and new customers, how focused they are on meeting their needs through the product offering and overall benefits.
In addition to this challenge, the FCA thematic report on ‘gone-aways’ set out a range of regulatory requirements for enhancing customer-facing services and communications in the life insurance and pensions market. Many of these requirements focus on supporting customers more with accurate, timely and fair communications throughout the product lifecycle. The other focus is on reuniting customers with the £4 billion-plus of life insurance and pensions assets held in the Unclaimed Asset Register.
Meeting FCA requirements and enhancing the customer experience
In order to support FCA compliance and to differentiate on the quality of customer services, life insurance and pension providers need to:
- Deliver regular communications for closed-book customers during the lifetime of a policy or pension agreement
- Take proactive measures to finding and contacting customers who have ‘gone away’
- Collect and maintain accurate customer data that can be used to create personalised customer communications
- Ensure that all customer communications are timely, fair, appropriate, and able to meet customers’ information needs.
In our new white paper ‘Joining the Dots’, we look at how organisations can achieve these goals. In particular, we focus on strategies and technologies for locating and contacting customers who cannot be contacted. We also consider how careful management and use of customer data can help you to create efficient, highly effective communications strategies. Delivering this will mean you can increase customer satisfaction and help to prevent customers going away in the first place, but also retain and enhance existing relations overall – providing a long-term engagement and retention strategy that provides a foundation for expanding relations over time.
