Looking back at the P&C Insurance sector in 2018, all signs point to it being a year of strong growth. A report published by Deloitte shares that overall economic growth and rising interest rates were just two of the prevailing market conditions that bolstered P&C Insurance carriers throughout the year. In addition, US premiums were written at an unprecedented rate and the insurable bases for both personal and commercial accounts expanded.

What we here at Alacriti find interesting and exciting in this growth is the impact that it had on bill payments. A strong and growing sector meant that more policyholders were making bill payments. And how policyholders chose to make their payments, from the funding sources they selected to the payment channels they used most often, are of particular interest to us.

On June 25, we hosted a webinar, “P&C Insurance: Consumer Bill Payment Preferences & What’s Ahead”, that featured speakers from Aite Group and Alacriti. In it, we reviewed historic bill payment preferences for P&C Insurance published by Aite Group in 2017 and shared our findings from 2018. In addition, our speakers looked ahead to future trends impacting the P&C Insurance sector including cloud computing, blockchain, and digital disbursements.

Here are some key takeaways from the webinar:

• In 2018, web-based payment channels handled more than three-quarters of all P&C Insurance payments value on Orbipay EBPP.
• Debit cards were used most frequently by P&C Insurance policyholders, but ACH accounted for highest percentage value of transactions.
• An opportunity remains for P&C Insurance companies to encourage policyholders toward less expensive funding methods to help reduce their overall cost of accepting bill payments.
• There was a significant preference for One Time payments and therefore an opportunity to encourage more policyholders toward AutoPay.
• Moving to cloud computing can create dynamic scale for P&C Insurance carriers to seamlessly accommodate surge periods of premium payments (beginning and end of the month, for example).
• Blockchain can be a powerful tool to combine insurance data from various sources and distribute it securely to stakeholders.
• In addition, blockchain can address some of the highly manual processes associated with P&C Insurance and allow new types of highly targeted insurance (flight delay insurance, for example) to be developed.
• Digital disbursements can help P&C Insurance carriers deliver a more modern claims payout experience to their policyholders than traditional paper checks.

Watch the recording to learn more.