FORECAST 2025:
Customer Experience
FORECAST 2025: Customer Experience
Author
January 2025
Providing an exceptional customer experience (CX) is top of mind for FORECAST 2025 participants. When we asked them what their company is doing to improve that experience, they shared a variety of strategies. As a group, they are committed to leveraging every available resource — among them, modernization, personalization, advanced technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and streamlined processes — to elevate the customer experience.
“We aim to provide Northwestern Mutual clients with an increasingly exceptional experience,” says Kamilah Williams-Kemp, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Northwestern Mutual. “It’s core to our ability to grow, remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace. Our proprietary financial planning platform (PX) is a signature component of Northwestern Mutual’s continuing commitment to excellence in experience. Co-created by advisors and experts across our organization, PX provides our clients with an exclusive financial planning experience that is modern, personalized, easy to understand and action-oriented.”
According to Chris Blunt, Chief Executive Officer, F&G, modernization is a key part of F&G’s CX strategy. “At F&G, our mission is to turn aspirations into reality, and exceeding customer expectations is part of that. Investing and improving on the overall customer experience is integrated throughout our entire process from strategic planning to product design to our company culture,” says Blunt. “Modernization (how we modernize our processes, how we do business, how we utilize technology) is also critical for us, particularly given our rapid growth rate.”
Caroline Feeney, EVP & Chief Executive Officer, U.S. Businesses, Prudential Financial, listed a number of ways that Prudential is improving CX including using personalization. “Prudential.com now offers more secure authentication, personalized recommendations and operates 20 percent faster,” she says.
Adrian Griggs, EVP & Chief Operating Officer, Pacific Life, says Pacific Life is also using personalized communication by “sending tailored notifications and reminders via email, SMS (Short Message Service (text)), or app notifications based on customer preferences.”
Innovative Technologies
Technology enhancements remain crucial for developing a robust CX strategy. Executives provided insights into the innovative technologies they are implementing to enhance CX within their organizations. “We recently announced a strategic collaboration with Accenture to enhance F&G’s technology platform capabilities through Accenture’s Life Insurance and Annuity Platform (ALIP),” says Blunt. “This partnership will help our teams create the best experience for our valued distribution partners and customers while better positioning us to gain more operational efficiencies, offer faster service and expand our distribution channels to drive innovation and future growth.”
Wade Harrison, EVP & Chief Retail Officer, Protective Life, says, that through a commitment to continuous improvement, Protective is advancing its technology and service capabilities to adapt to changing market conditions and business demands. “Robust self-service options coupled with advanced automation and data analytics improve efficiencies and turnaround times for application completions, underwriting, customer service and beneficiary payouts,” says Harrison. “Our ongoing investments in AI, machine learning and process automation allow us to optimize our business operations continuously, ensuring greater efficiency and enhancing the customer experience.”
“We are developing a single, digital application experience across all product lines, with plans to introduce an initial version in 2025,” says Aaron Ball, EVP and Co-Head of the Foundational Business, New York Life. “By using data, simplifying questions and only asking them once, and creating greater visibility into status, this experience will be a game changer in how we do business — not only providing a much better experience for applicants but also enabling our agents to really lean into holistic planning and meet more client needs.”
Streamlined Processes
Most of the executives in our panel mentioned streamlined processes as an integral part of their CX strategy. “We are centered on ease of doing business, empowering customers and deepening relationships to provide long-term value and confidence,” says Sarah Mineau, SVP, Life/Health & Investment Planning Services, State Farm Insurance. “That means we are relentless about simplifying and streamlining experiences, reducing frictions throughout shopping, buying and ownership processes, reducing complexity for customers and our professionals, and overall making it easier for customers to take steps to put their plans into action. Offering professional guidance complemented by empowering digital experiences is our focus.”
“Aflac is committed to providing simple, accurate, and streamlined customer experiences, and in particular, fulfilling our promise at the time of claim,” says Virgil Miller, President, Aflac U.S., Aflac. “We have a two-fold strategy. We are focused on creating digital experiences that drive increased automation, speed, accuracy and ease for our customers. We are also focused on delivering segmented experiences, where appropriate, that are tailored to the product and market segment of the customer.”
According to Bob Jurgensmeier, Chief Executive Officer, Ameritas Life Insurance Group, Ameritas is also focusing on technology and enhancing self-service. “We continue increasing the number of self-service capabilities for customers and producers so they can interact with us based on their preferences,” says Jurgensmeier “Our volume of business coming in through automated accelerated underwriting continues to grow.”
Jasmine Jirele, President & Chief Executive Officer, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, gave a couple of examples of how Allianz is improving its CX. “We have enhanced our “performance lock” feature so that policyholders can more easily use our product features that allow them to lock in market gains independent of their renewal date,” she says. “We have enhanced illustration software that allows financial professionals to create more comprehensive product illustrations to help their clients with scenario planning.”
“We have implemented automated/accelerated underwriting, are looking to enhance digital options for our stakeholders, driving down unit costs through technology and business process transformation, and expanding social media engagement,” says Denise McCauley, President & Chief Executive Officer, WoodmenLife.
Marc Giguère, President & Chief Executive Officer, Munich Re, U.S. Life and Health, says his company continues to invest in technology to stay current with what customers want. “Staying ahead of the pace of change and meeting customer expectations requires carriers to have specialized experience or make massive information technology (IT) investments,” he says. “At Munich Re Life US, we’ve invested heavily in alitheia, our rapid risk assessment platform. We believe it is the best tool to help carriers and distributors scale and to improve the customer journey. It leverages the strength of our underwriting, data science, biometrics and medical expertise and is designed to be flexible, fast and intuitive.”
Leveraging AI
Many companies are using AI to assist in creating the best customer experience possible. Feeney provided some examples of how Prudential is using AI to transform CX. “In our Life business, in addition to using AI for faster underwriting, we listened to direct feedback from advisors and moved our service center onshore, which has improved our customer experience metrics,” Feeney says. “Individual retirement strategies recently launched an AI module to assist wholesalers in submitting customer applications without errors and reducing not-in-good-order (NIGO) rates. A new GenAI-powered experience, Advisor Connect, co-created with Prudential Advisors, has just launched providing on-the-go access to leads and client information.”
Pacific Life is using AI chat features as part of its CX strategy. Griggs says the company is “implementing AI-powered chatbots and conversational interactive voice response (IVR) to assist customers with common queries and provide 24/7 support.”
Jerry Lyphout, President & Chief Executive Officer, Modern Woodmen of America, says Modern Woodman of America also has plans to use AI to better serve its customers. “A key component in our growth initiative is to be easy to do business with as it pertains to all audiences,” Lyphout says. “Being a fraternal, this not only means our members and financial representatives, but also our fraternal leaders. Over the last three years, we have made significant investments in our member website (digital service delivery options), social media engagement (at the corporate, financial representative and fraternal leader levels), online tools (for our financial representatives and fraternal leaders), as well as accelerated underwriting (introduced in 2024). AI will be integrated throughout all of these initiatives as we move forward.”
