Here's How Prudential Is Using Data to Better Serve Its Customers
We are living in a data-driven world; of that, there is little doubt. From targeted advertising to buyer personas, there is seemingly no limit to the ways in which customer information can be used by the innovative brands that know how to effectively wield it.
Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated every single day and the amount of the global data sphere subject to analysis will grow to 5.2 zettabytes by 2025. Meanwhile, with 91.6% of companies worldwide confirming an increased pace in investment in big data in 2019, it's easy to see why data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers than their peers and predicted to take $1.8 trillion annually from them in new business.
Much of the insurance industry is built around data, as it's what helps companies deduce risk and policy coverage. However, innovative brands such as Prudential are also deploying it to help them become more customer-centric organizations.
Prudential
Customer centricity represents a huge change in focus for modern brands as they move from being all about product or price to putting the customer at the fore and devising new ways to give them exceptional experiences. Customer experience is now considered to be more important than any other factor when it comes to securing and retaining business.
"The first thing you need to drive is the shift in mindset," said Prudential's Chief Marketing Officer, Naveen Agarwal. "The customer has to be in the center. It's not what you do or the products that you build. It's the needs of the customer becoming the center of everything that you do as an organization. And, frankly, it requires rethinking everything. The only way you can do that is by changing the thinking of each part of the organization so they all can think about customer-centric digital transformation in the same way."
To this end, Prudential has employed a skilled and experienced team of marketers and data scientists whose role is to ensure that the company truly understands its customers' wants, needs, pain points, and what they expect from their insurance providers.
"We're already using data science in our personalization thinking, in our product design, in terms of how we understand the needs of the customers and think about future solutions," said Chief Customer Officer, Hema Widhani. "And we are doing all of this in an integrated manner. We are using artificial intelligence across a base of 22 million customers to better understand details about their lives and financial needs."
This takes the form of such innovations as using AI to analyze customers' accounts to help round out their financial wellness road maps, and machine learning to better understand the risk and longevity potential of life insurance clients. However, Prudential's use of data goes well beyond this.
Data-Driven
Prudential has deployed an AI-powered platform named LINK to help customers self-guide and set their own financial goals. The platform helps customers gain insight into their spending habits and uses gamification to add a level of competition to sticking to budgets.
The platform also offers personalized financial planning and recommendations for insurance, annuities, and investments in a portfolio of exchange-traded funds. When a customer signs into their dashboard, they are presented with assets and investments, as well as personalized recommendations based on the personal goals they have set — building an emergency fund, insuring loved ones, saving for retirement or purchasing a home — as well as relevant products and a suggested course of action.
Prudential has also taken the sting out of applying for insurance with PruFast Track. This innovative digital tool takes the form of an accelerated underwriting initiative which processes applications faster. It achieves this by leveraging third-party data to supplement application data, resulting in a paperless process which doesn't require any medical exams or bloodwork, and can grant approval in as little as 48 hours from the moment of submission.
Final Thoughts
And that's not the end of it either, with Prudential constantly working to develop new digital tools through its dedicated innovation lab.
"For us, innovation comes in all shapes and forms. It can be around how we engage with our customers, how we distribute and go to market, or around our actual products," said Vice President and Head of Decision Insights Group at Prudential Financial, Jackie Chan. "The work that we do in support of innovation can take two different forms. First there is the more traditional market research, for instance an assessment that helps you identify potential white spaces. On the other end of the spectrum we do a lot of iterative testing and design, partnering closely with many of the teams that have the potential to do faster, and smaller bits of insights that can help us take a more agile approach."
You can hear Prudential's Vice President of Products, Eric Hamilton, speak at Digital Insurance 2020, taking place in July at the Renaissance Chicago, IL.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.
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