CRM for insurance: features, payoffs, best platforms & selection guide
August 22, 2024
Insurance CRM software features comprehensive customer-oriented capabilities to unify prospect and policyholder data, streamline marketing and sales processes, and automate administrative tasks like policy and claims management.
With 10+ years of experience in delivering tailored CRM solutions, Itransition helps companies in the insurance sector implement robust customer relationship management systems designed to meet their unique business needs as well as address industry-specific challenges.
Key CRM features for the insurance industry
Lead management
Insurance CRM systems typically include marketing-oriented functionality to identify and segment new leads based on their online behavior and personal data. As a result, adopters can launch targeted and automated marketing campaigns to engage such leads with personalized ads and offers, including insurance products with coverage options matching their preferences. These tools can also rank leads based on their probability to convert to help prioritize high-value ones.
Contact & account management
A CRM solution enables agents to centralize customer information, such as personal data (name, address, telephone number, email, etc.), communication history, contact information, and respective policies and claims. Insurance agents can also easily search this information in CRM to get more context when working on a deal or assisting customers.
Sales management
CRM software helps insurance companies create, assign, and track daily sales activities. It can also automate clerical tasks like scheduling appointments, sending follow-up emails, and generating personalized proposals, quotes, and invoices. Additionally, CRM enables sales teams to interact with prospects and customers through various communication channels and monitor their sales pipeline progress via visual dashboards.
Policy administration
Insurance-oriented CRM solutions feature automation capabilities to streamline policy management, including policy issuance, billing, premium scheduling and collection, renewal, endorsement, and commission calculation. Furthermore, agents can use CRM software to create catalogs of insurance products and establish their respective coverage terms and eligibility rules, or leverage CRM’s collaboration tools to share and discuss policy details.
Claims management
With the help of CRM, insurance agencies can automatically distribute incoming claims to available agents. In addition, CRM solutions can extract data from FNOL and other documents, verify coverage based on predefined rules, calculate the due claim payment amount according to available information, and proceed with claims settlement through full or recurring payments. Some CRM platforms also enable insurers to create self-service portals that clients can use to submit claims and track their status.
Analytics & reporting
Modern CRM platforms for insurers generally provide advanced data analytics and reporting capabilities powered by artificial intelligence to monitor customer behavior, forecast sales and revenues, and track relevant KPIs, such as sales per policy type and distribution channel or monthly policy renewals.
Turn to Itransition’s team for seamless CRM adoption
Best insurance CRM software on the market
Insurance companies can build custom CRM systems or opt for an off-the-shelf platform typically delivered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. However, only a few platforms can boast industry-specific functionality and a strong market presence together with high user satisfaction. Here's a brief selection of popular CRM solutions ranked as leaders by the G2 Grid and featuring out-of-the-box insurance-oriented capabilities.
Salesforce is an undisputed CRM market leader that offers an impressive range of generic products for sales and marketing and Financial Services Cloud, a comprehensive CRM solution geared towards the unique needs of insurers and other BFSI companies. Furthermore, insurance companies can choose from the four bundles tailored to specific insurance sectors (Agencies & Brokerages, Life & Annuity, Group Benefits, and Property & Casualty) that combine Financial Services Cloud with other Salesforce products.
Key strengths & capabilities
- Insurance Policy Administration features to facilitate or fully automate policy quoting, issuance, billing, premium scheduling, renewal, and commission calculation
- Insurance Product Administration capabilities to set up and categorize products in your catalog, defining eligibility rules and coverage terms
- Insurance Claims Management covering intake via configurable forms, auto-adjudication based on predefined rules, and payment linked to policy terms
- Record Rollups feature aggregating policyholders’ personal data across all their records and accounts (insurance policy, bank account, investment account, etc.)
- Customizable Agent Console to monitor a variety of metrics, including sales performance by policy type or monthly sales and renewals
- Account Record Page’s Event Component to track key events in policyholders’ lives and define contextual actions like offering auto insurance upon a car purchase
- Policy and Policy 360 Components to show an account’s policies and claims and enable agents to search for policies by insured item, policy number, or policyholder
- Interest Tags to categorize prospects and customers based on their preferences and interests for specific insurance products
- Branch Management functionality to track activities and performance of multiple branches of an insurance business and assign customer records to specific branches
Limitations
Steep learning curve and expensive modular licensing
Pricing
- Multiple plans for each module of Financial Services Cloud and other Salesforce products
- Full pricing datasheet available on the Salesforce website
- 30-day free trial
Dynamics 365 is an extensive suite of business applications that offer advanced CRM capabilities to meet your customer needs and includes AI-based sales and service automation and analytics.
Key strengths & capabilities
- Unified customer profiles including open insurance policies, past interactions, open cases, and other details
- Customer journey personalization (including tailored content and recommendations) based on metrics like average spend, number of policies, and total amount insured
- AI-powered scoring models to rank leads and opportunities and prioritize the most promising ones
- Sales pipeline management to monitor open sales tasks and new assignments and receive pipeline updates in natural language from Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant
- Copilot-powered recommendations on the best next sales actions to close a deal
- Automated generation of opportunity summaries, email drafts, meeting preparation notes, and other sales content
- Contact Center featuring AI self-service capabilities like context-aware chatbots and virtual assistants to facilitate claim submission and resolution
- Insurance-specific data model to capture relevant information on customers' policies, coverages, and claims
Limitations
Complex administration and limited off-the-shelf integrations with third-party services
Pricing
- Multiple plans for each product (Sales, Service, etc.)
- Licensing guide available on the Microsoft website
- 30-day free trial
Zoho is a highly flexible software solution with a fully customizable user interface and over 500 out-of-the-box integrations. The platform provides insurers with general-use CRM capabilities and specialized tools for policy administration and claim resolution.
Key strengths & capabilities
- Workflow automation rules to trigger predefined actions under certain conditions, such as sending policy renewal reminders before the expiration date
- Multi-page layouts to organize policyholder data and manage multiple policies each customer has signed up for
- Claim assignment rules to distribute claims to a suitable employee for more responsive customer support and faster resolution
- Deal Management system to track multiple sales pipelines for different insurance services and identify promising deals to prioritize
- Account Management tool offering full visibility into your contacts and associated activity and pending deals
- Blueprints to orchestrate, visualize, and standardize operations like claim processing across your organization
- Omnichannel communication capabilities to engage with clients across multiple channels (email, live chat, phone calls, etc.) and track past customer interactions
- Built-in analytics engine to track the policy sales pipeline, monitor key customer metrics, and forecast sales or other trends
- Mobile app enabling field agents to access policyholder data and other key information from anywhere
Limitations
Integration complexities and poor support according to some users
Pricing
- Four plans, with pricing available on the website
- Monthly or annual billing, with a discount for the latter option
- 15-day free trial
LeadSquared is an intuitive software solution that combines generic CRM features for marketing automation and sales execution with a rich set of insurance-oriented capabilities to boost policy sales and renewals.
Key strength & capabilities
- Multi-channel policy inquiry and application capture from insurance aggregator websites, social media, and phone calls
- Inquiry and application distribution to suitable field agents based on the applicant’s location and insurance type, the agent’s availability, and other criteria
- Customer portals with mobile-friendly interfaces to enable self-service policy application
- Lead scoring and prioritization based on their profiles and activity and automated follow-up actions targeting high-value ones
- Electronic and video KYC verification features to minimize the risk of fraud and speed up customer onboarding
- Prospect activity tracking on your website and other touchpoints to trigger automated communications via email and WhatsApp or proactive calls from your agents
- Agent productivity features encompassing meeting, call, and route planning, next task recommendations, real-time reports, and field team geo-tracking
- Automated policy renewal reminders and offer communications to foster customer retention
- Sales reports covering insurance types, distribution channels, individual agent performance, and other metrics
Limitations
Sporadic lags, downtimes, bugs, and glitches
Pricing
- Four plans for Marketing Automation, starting at $400 per month (up to 10,000 contacts)
- Four plans for Sales Execution, starting at $25 per user per month
- Billed annually
Pipedrive is a user-friendly sales CRM that focuses primarily on lead management and sales automation but complements these industry-agnostic capabilities with specialized functionality for insurance policy and claims management.
Key strengths & capabilities
- Customizable fields to record key information like policy type and premium amounts
- Automated follow-ups triggered when insurance policies are due for renewal
- Claims assignment system to distribute each case to the right agent and boost response rates
- Marketing automation capabilities to launch targeted email campaigns that automatically deliver personalized messages to each lead
- Contact management system to unify your contacts’ information and communications and monitor how contacts progress through each stage of the sales pipeline
- Sales management tool to build customizable insurance sales workflows defining deal stages and tasks in line with your organizational needs
- Productivity features like automated SMS updates and Slack notifications to keep your agents informed about deals and opportunities
- Lead generation functionality, including out-of-the-box contact forms and templates, as well as chatbots that can be embedded into your website to answer customer questions
- Reporting capabilities to monitor insurance operations and track reps’ performance via customizable dashboards
Limitations
Lack of advanced marketing and analytics features
Pricing
- Five plans, starting at $14 per seat per month
- Billed monthly or annually, with a discount for the latter option
- 14-day free trial
Insurance CRM platform selection tips
Learn about product capabilities
Shortlist CRM platforms providing out-of-the-box features, possibly insurance-oriented, close to your ideal functional scope, as well as built-in integrations with other systems or third-party services you currently use. You can typically fill some gaps through customizations, but these can be expensive or limited within predefined settings established by the vendor.
Review pricing & conditions
Request detailed quotes from vendors and compare their pricing models (per-user, flat-fee, tiered by features, etc.) to identify the most convenient one for your usage scenario. You need to pay attention to contract clauses that can impose vendor lock-ins which can prevent you from switching to another CRM, or entail unexpected costs for premium services.
Ask for feedback
Ask business partners who have already adopted the CRM you’re interested in if they’re satisfied with it. You can also consult peer-to-peer review sites like G2, Gartner, or Capterra to identify the most popular products by user base and score and get an idea of each platform’s pros and cons.
Try out the best options
Several CRM platforms currently offer free trial periods, allowing your organization to test them before adoption. Get the most out of this opportunity by establishing a trial team of members from departments like marketing, sales, or customer service to gather comprehensive feedback.
Benefits of adopting insurance CRM solutions
Superior visibility
CRM systems help businesses centralize sales and customer data, policy details, and other key information from multiple corporate systems or communication channels into a single platform. This allows insurance companies to identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, optimize their service offering, and harmonize their business processes.
Enhanced efficiency
CRM software can automate time-consuming clerical tasks like policy administration and claims management to speed up policy issuance and case resolution while enabling insurance agents to focus on their relationships with clients.
Increased profits
CRM solutions enable insurers to maximize lead generation through segmentation, targeted marketing campaigns (including email marketing), and omnichannel engagement. Insurance companies can also boost conversion rates via lead ranking, sales force automation, and personalized offers.
Improved customer experience
Insurance firms can leverage CRM software to boost customer satisfaction through tailored insurance plans that meet their expectations as well as faster claims processing and settlement. This typically results in long-term loyalty and higher lifetime value.
Our CRM services
With over 10 years of experience in implementing CRM projects, Itransition helps insurance companies build and adopt custom or platform-based solutions in line with their specific needs.
- Elicit your business needs and define your CRM strategy
- Assess your software ecosystem and existing CRM, if any
- Conceptualize the solution and select a tech stack
- Identify a suitable CRM platform and assist with license optimization
- Define the project’s roadmap and budget
- Supervise the custom development or platform customization process
- Create a CRM migration plan and backup strategy
- Provide data governance and management consulting
- Provide user training and onboarding
- Design the CRM architecture
- Perform custom CRM front-end and back-end development or customize and configure the selected CRM platform
- Integrate the solution with your software ecosystem (ERP, accounting software, agency management software, etc.)
- Execute end-to-end QA and testing
- Deploy the CRM to the target environment
- Migrate data from your legacy CRM to the new one
- Provide post-release software maintenance and troubleshooting
Implement your insurance CRM solution with Itransition’s guidance
Fostering customer centricity with an insurance CRM
Despite being a general trend across the entire industry spectrum, a more customer-centric approach can be particularly beneficial for the insurance sector. Agents interact daily with clients who are facing or preparing for delicate situations and, for this reason, may be in distress and require special attention.
CRM systems help insurance professionals address such needs, enabling more personalized and responsive service delivery. Consider partnering with Itransition to implement a CRM solution meeting your corporate goals and the expectations of your customer base.
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