Uber & Insurance: How the Gig Economy Can Infuse Life Into a Legacy Industry
By Robin Smith
You’re seeing it everywhere: old-school business learning new tricks. From Expedia’s acquisition of Homeaway, SAP’s buyout of Fieldglass, and the proliferation of Venmo, legacy industries are transitioning to digital platforms, offering personalized communications and incorporating sharing and gig economy aspects in their business models, too.
As other industries are making this transition, the insurance industry is looking on. Why? Unlike the tech industry, the insurance sector is one that is very traditional and a little slower to adopt new methods, namely because it’s been around a lot longer than most (its origins go back to 17th century London). When it comes, however, to on-demand data gathering, claims handling and processing, the Ubers, Rocket Lawyers, and Airbnbs of the world provide great, forward-thinking business models. While insurance has historically been a top-down space that is focused on accruing capital and doesn’t adapt, the gig economy has put the power in the people’s hands, and we are looking to a future where insurance will transition to become firmly on the side of the customer, as other industries have done.
For a space that is fundamentally built around risk aversion, uberization provides the perfect storm of opportunity for the insurance industry to adapt to a nimble, twenty-first century model. Here is what needs to happen for insurance to become uberized:
That’s Why They Call it Snail Mail
Platforms like Airbnb rely on mobile technology to communicate with crowd workers, sending instant notifications and messages to homeowners and renters simultaneously, while the insurance industry is traditionally paper-intensive, which slows down the claims process immensely and frustrates customers.
Paper inspections are a hindrance to quality assurance as well, and providing excellent Q&A is essential for an industry that relies on excellence. Looking to mobile apps and digital technology, the insurance industry can adapt to this model in order to create efficient and accurate communications and data processing.
Crunching the Numbers
Capturing data has never been easier than point-and-click. Uber uses tracking technology to store and manage its data, showing drivers hotspot pick-up locations, rating systems and surge pricing.
Optimizing captured data, automating data entry and systems processing without the items being misfiled, misplaced or eaten by the proverbial dog is all possible. Seamless data integration at the point of data capture—it sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?
Help Wanted
Crowdsourced labor solutions not only provide diversified earning opportunities, they also provide broader variety of options to workers, consumers and businesses. All parties can scale up or down, but where and how do they participate and leverage the gig economy to provide for their financial or business goals? Rocket Lawyer, for instance, taps into the latent supply of lawyers while making legal representation accessible.
As these crowdsourced solutions grow, expand and diversify, companies and consumers will have the opportunity to test and identify the best of the best without long term commitments. After all, the most popular ridesharing and homeowner vacation rental solutions rose to the top before General Motors, Ford, and Expedia bought in.
Harnessing the Power of Local
Some will argue the gig economy is the free market at its best, but the status of the market’s success depends on how individuals and companies strategically apply these solutions to their business challenges. As Airbnb and Uber do, if insurance companies can harness the power of local regions and their citizens, capitalizing on their desire to maximize their skills and services, insurance services can significantly cut costs and be equipped to provide more accurate, transparent and cheaper services to users.
Why dispatch an employee across the metro, county, state, or even country, incurring all the related expenses and time delays to gather data and take pictures when you can send someone who’s already there? Not only can companies save time, travel, and employee productivity, but they can save on training and onboarding costs as well.
By harnessing elements of the gig economy, the insurance industry can join other legacy industries that have made the transition to digital, such as banking and telecom. By taking insurance one step beyond digitization, incorporating the twenty-first century lessons from Uber, insurance can finally claim that it lies among the disrupted.
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Robin Smith is the Co-Founder and CEO of WeGoLook, an Oklahoma City-based company that specializes in on-demand field inspection and verification services. With its web and mobile platform, the company empowers a 20,000+ mobile workforce, known as Lookers, to collect and verify information and fulfill custom tasks for businesses and consumers alike.
