We keep hearing this need to ‘digitise’ or that ‘digital transformation’ is key.
Ourselves, for one, use these terms repeatedly as well…
The government have placed rather much emphasis on this as well, and this was underway long before Covid-19.
But the pandemic came a couple of years back and smacked us all really hard in the face.
You know like… you have to wake up for work but you keep snoozing the alarm. Then suddenly someone just comes by and tosses you out of bed.
I guess that’s why they call it a rude awakening?
But really. The question for many still lingers.
What does ‘digitising your business’ really means?
Why would insurance intermediaries want or need to do it?
To further make sense of this, we thought we should illustrate the relation between your goals for your insurance business and how digitisation gets you there.
At the end of the day, digitising your business should directly correlate with helping you achieve your goals. If you do not see the relation, then it should not be forced upon you.
I mean no one should do something for the sake of it right?
Like, you add chilli to your laksa to make it spicier. And you do it because you like it spicier. Not because you see everyone adding chilli and you just follow suit.
We have spoken to many agents to understand their WHYs (goals), and realised, they all culminate in three key ones:
- I want to close a deal FASTER
- I want to close MORE DEALS
- I want EASE IN MANAGING MY BUSINESS AND TO BE ABLE TO SERVE MY CLIENTS WELL
To put things into perspective, the table below shows the HOWs of digitising your business in relation to the WHYs.
And in the context of the laksa example… Your ‘WHY’ = I want my laksa to be spicier. Your ‘HOW’ = add chilli!
| WHY | HOW |
| I want to close a deal faster | Cut out all the (repetitive) effort you have to put in to source for multiple quotes |
| I want ease in managing my business | Automate the tracking of all your deals (past, present or future) |
| I want to close more deals | Expand your network digitally to get more referrals |
It is not the intention of this article to come across rhetorical or be a crusade for digitisation.
This writer here still take notes using a pen and paper – no shame in that.
The intention is for insurance intermediaries to ask if digitisation is a journey worth embarking on and only embark on such if the answer is yes!
At the end of the day, we do not believe that there is ever 1 x silver bullet to solve all problems.
We certainly do not want to take away the fact that there are some things digitisation can never replace – like good follow up service or building trust and rapport with the client.
Precisely because we do not believe that technology can ever replace the empathy, experience and trust between an agent and a client that Surer exists to support intermediaries and not to replace them.
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