The Evolving Role of Content Providers in the Property Ecosystem

Companies in the property ecosystem—lenders, insurers, property management companies and others—use data and information from content providers to drive improved consumer experience through automated workflows, streamline processing and expedited risk assessment. However, because of the surge of demand for radically different consumer experiences, the role of content providers supporting the property insurance space has significantly changed in the past few years.

There are two areas where this evolution is especially predominant—a change in workflows of how consumers want to engage with their banks, insurance carriers and other service providers as well as what content is required to enable that engagement.

• Consumer engagement model change is driven by consumers to mirror their typical digital experience and a desire to simplify their interaction with a service provider, often wanting that interaction to be mobile first. Moreover, consumers want their interaction to be personalized – “I will give you my personal information in exchange for services that are very tailored to me.”

For service providers, this evolution in consumer behavior demands the deep need for skills and mastery of mobile technologies as well consumer content-driven, dynamic, rules-based workflows, which allow consumers to have an easy, personalized interaction with a bank or an insurance company. Moreover, the whole range of multi-channel workflow options should be supported technologically within a single business transaction. For example, a consumer might want to start an insurance quote online, conduct a self-inspection of the property utilizing a mobile device and finish coverage, limit and deductible selection on the phone with an agent guiding them through decisions.

• Content generation and processing: Continuing with the insurance example, to enable the required digital consumer experience, accurate and complete content is needed by insurance companies that want to know everything about the person and property, as well as all the hazards the property is exposed to. And close enough is simply not good enough anymore. To fulfill that demand, insurance content providers are reinventing how they collect and aggregate content, which is driving a fundamental change in skillsets to support them. Some of those include:
• Property imagery, such as satellite, aerial, streetview and mobile-captured imagery, is becoming more available and current. Having the ability to process and manage imagery and video content is complex on its own. But just having imagery does not directly equate to a simplified workflow. Content providers should perform automated and accurate imagery extraction, using machine learning-concepts, and aggregate it with traditional data sources to generate complete and accurate data sets.
  • Equally important is having the competence to aggregate social media-generated data. Big data processing and management skillsets are needed to generate meaningful, curated content out of that data.
• The ability to process, store and deliver content through the cloud in a secure manner is becoming standard procedure. Emerging technologies, such as blockchain, are making significant inroads in providing better security for this data and more financial institutions are heading in that direction.

With the evolution of business models comes the need to staff and support technology organizations for the required skills and knowledge to manage that evolution. IT departments within service providers are now being asked to support mobile technologies, big data processing, imagery and video processing, machine-learning data extraction and blockchain transaction management. IT leaders need balance and structure in the organization that supports all the legacy workflows, content development and delivery with the skillsets and technology required to support emerging trends.

InterChange™ Premium Prefill from CoreLogic®

By Mikhail Palatnik, VP Product Management at CoreLogic®