The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. reaffirmed its commitment to an extensive, multi-year digital investment strategy to improve its independent agent and customer experience across the insurance value chain. The investments are designed to address the changing needs and preferences of The Hanover’s partners and their customers.
“Our industry faces an innovation imperative, with advancements in web, mobile, voice and imaging technology creating new customer expectations and redefining the way our agent partners and we serve our customers,” said John C. Roche, president and chief executive officer at The Hanover. “As an independent agency company, we made a commitment in 2017 to drive innovation across our business in a very determined way. Our goal was to focus on evolving customer segments and leverage data, analytics and emerging technology to create insurance solutions that meet our partners’ and their customers’ needs, improve the agency and customer experience, and help our partners grow. We’ve made significant progress and are committed to continued investments.”
The Hanover’s new digital capabilities span all areas of its business.
Enhancing agents’ and their customers’ experience
Based on a deep understanding of specific agent and customer needs, The Hanover is:
- delivering a new quote and issue platform, TAP Sales, with an intuitive design and modern workflow
- expanding its self-service capabilities for customers through My Hanover Policy and Hanover mobile app, an online tool providing policy details, bill payment options and claims reporting. The company will make this technology available to its small commercial customers later this year
- introducing new capabilities for e-signature, e-delivery of policy documents and bills, and e-documents of policy information for agents
- investing in the use of robotics to help facilitate more efficient and responsive service
- creating live chat capabilities for agents to communicate quickly with questions or service needs
Developing exceptional claims and risk solutions offerings
To continue to elevate the claims experience, the company is:
- offering digital solutions for self-service, such as video collaboration tools, that streamline the claims process and improve claims handling
- investing in capabilities to provide digital delivery of claims payments and related information through one platform, offering quicker claims handling
- expanding its use of drone technology across the country to aid in its claims and risk solutions efforts for mitigating potential losses, and as a digital-first approach to claims inspections and analysis
Helping independent agency partners grow
Finally, the company continues to identify new ways to help its independent agents acquire and quote new business by:
- introducing its new digital platform, Insurago, an innovative customer-facing digital insurance platform that enables independent agents to acquire new business, including freelancers, independent contractors and self-employed professionals who need professional liability insurance
- closely partnering with the agency management platforms that continue to make investments in capabilities to make it easier for agents to access carrier appetites, prefill data for quoting and bind new and renewal business
- leveraging data and analytics to reduce the number of underwriting questions during the quoting process and enhance agents’ overall experience by prefilling pertinent data in the new business and renewal process
- closely partnering with insurtechs that are developing solutions that enable independent agents to more efficiently serve their clients and improve their economics. These solutions are across the entire agency value proposition; from customer acquisition, to client information gathering/quoting, all the way through the binding and servicing of their clients
“Investing in digital advancements provides an important competitive advantage for our agents in a rapidly changing marketplace and strengthens their overall value proposition to their customers,” said Richard W. Lavey, president, Hanover Agency Markets at The Hanover. “We are excited to offer these new expansive offerings. As we look to the future, we plan to continue to develop our capabilities to include additional tools that give our agents the ability to best serve their customers, solidify their relevancy and grow their businesses.”
The company’s investments in technology have been well received by its agent partners.
“The Hanover has been a great partner, investing time and capital in the independent agency channel in order to help drive efficiencies and improve the deliverables to our customers,” said Charles J. Brophy, president and chief executive officer, U.S. East at HUB International. “As distribution partners, it is incumbent upon us to continue to thoughtfully innovate and, by utilizing the tools and technology that are being offered by The Hanover, we can hopefully execute on creating an interactive customer experience.”
For more information about The Hanover, please visit hanover.com.