Access to and usage of the Internet is creating unprecedented business opportunities in the financial services marketplace. The Internet is revolutionising the communication and purchase patterns of consumers and the provision of services by manufacturers and distributors.

Electronic servicing will dramatically reduce the cost of access to market and policy servicing costs benefiting both insurance providers and consumers alike.

Online communication is an effective and cost-saving tool. It is now being used by many organisations as an addition to traditional marketing avenues. However, consider the savings and increased profits that can be achieved by utilising the internet to communicate more effectively and efficiently across the whole spectrum of customer contact.

The Benefits for You

Substantial cost savings in:

• Production Time
• Printing
• Postage
• Telephone Costs
• Data Entry Costs

E-mail can cost as little as from 1p per message depending on the volume and the system used. Compare that to mail costs of 40p to 80p per letter or more depending on the type and weight of the mail. Also, it is not unusual to have a suite of letters for each communication type e.g. a policy renewal with initial letter, follow up, confirmation etc., thereby compounding the costs.

Greater Efficiency:

Key data can be collected about e-mail that can improve its effectiveness for the future. This data includes:

• Number of messages opened. Are recipients opening the mail or are they deleting it without even looking at it?
• Number of click-throughs: How many people clicked through on the message, and which links did they use more often?

Faster Communications:

Typical timing of a mail communication is one month to develop creative, one month to print the package, two weeks to mail, one to two months to read the results. This totals three to four months for the particular communication cycle. E-mail can be developed, deployed, responses analysed in a two/three week period, with the bulk of the time spent on the creating the package.

The effective life of an e-mail message is about 2/3 days so this will speed up the communication cycle and if a response to action is not received e.g. a policy renewal, then follow-up messages can be despatched quickly and more often thus increasing the renewal percentage over traditional methods. The ability that e-mail provides to conduct final pushes for events or other deadline-oriented functions is an important factor in customer retention. It is an inexpensive contingency plan online, but terribly expensive offline.

The Benefits for Your Customers

Discounted premiums:

Some of the enhanced profits can be returned to customers prepared to communicate online through premium discounts.

A greater sense of belonging:

Encouraging a two way one to one dialogue will cement the relationship between you and your customers. Through the use of newsletters and timely communications offering product enhancements etc your customers become more appreciative and more valuable to you.

A more reliable delivery system:

With our postal service becoming less efficient the ability to communicate online is definite plus point ensuring that changes are notified and confirmed swiftly and efficiently.

A permanent computer record of all exchanges made between you:

Customer records contained in a computer file on the customers own PC is more efficient and reliable than paper records that can easily be misplaced or lost.

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