Ensuring customer retention: insurers’ perception of customer loyalty

Abstract

Purpose Customer feedback is believed to provide an important retailer metric. Notwithstanding, customer retention still presents a challenge in today’s increasingly digitalised business environment. The insurance industry has recently begun its digitalisation process and is struggling with customer retention. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the recurrent trends in the academic discourse surrounding this topic. Design/methodology/approach This narrative review has documented journal publications from January 2000 to February 2018, using the PRISMA statement. The Web of Science and SCOPUS databases were examined for prior studies of digitalisation and customer loyalty in an insurance setting. Findings The most recurrent themes were those deemed to be of most interest to the wider academic community and in greatest need of additional research. Expressed as a “conditional statement” this is summarised as: “IF [most recurring] THEN [need for further research]”. Most articles were published in UK-based journals, with most first authors listed in the USA as their country of origin. The articles most commonly discussed the need for “Proactive retention”, i.e. taking pre-emptive action to secure customer loyalty. This exposes a gap with extant theories on customer loyalty/customer retention, which favours customer feedback as an important metrics. Research limitations/implications The articles investigated were not ranked beyond mentioning the number of publications found in each respective journal, as to determine any distinguishable patterns of publication. Practical implications The need for studies on “Proactive retention” is likely desirable also in other areas than insurance. Originality/value The study exposes a gap in extant theory, which mostly discusses retention from a posteriori knowledge. However, most examined literature is actually calling for a priori knowledge.

The Digital (R)evolution of Insurance Business Models

“…This brings us to the third question: How does the use of new technologies change customer relationship? An initial approximation might lead us to state that technological innovation presents new opportunities to satisfy customer expectations, as many studies on the subject confirm (Larsson and Broström, 2019). Customer satisfaction is certainly increased by the possibility to manage the use of insurance cover and any claims independently, anywhere and at any time (Akroush and Mahadin, 2019;Rochin Demong et al, 2019;Kaewsawad and Li, 2018).…”

“…Several media articles and studies, mostly by practitioners and fewer from academic researchers, attempt to investigate the impact of digitisation applied to the insurance sector (Segev and Vickers, 2017;Muller et al, 2015;McKinsey, 2016;Willis Towers Watson, 2017). They analyse the strategic implications of new technologies on cost structures (Freysoldt et al, 2018;Berger et al, 2016;Catlin et al, 2015), business processes (KPMG, 2019;EY, 2018), customer satisfaction (Larsson and Broström, 2019;Moneta, 2014), human resources (Johansson and Vogelgesang, 2015) and newly emerging risks (Singh et al, 2020;Egan et al, 2019;Biener et al, 2015).…”

Non-life insurance cancellation: a systematic quantitative literature review

“…The publications selected were analysed according to their methodological approach. Eight papers are theoretical (Larsson and Broström 2019;Brophy 2015;Gallo 2014;Van Gelder et al 2018;Guillenet al 2008;Naujoks et al 2017;Rawson et al 2013;Julie Robson 2015) and 18 are empirical; of the latter, 16 are quantitative (Bolancé et al 2016;Brockett et al 2008;de la Llave et al 2019;Felício and Freire 2016;Frank and Lamiraud 2009;Gamble et al 2009;Guillen et al 2003Guillen et al , 2009Guillén et al 2012;Günther et al 2014;Haugen and Moger 2016;Jeong et al 2018;Lin 2010;López-Díaz et al 2017;Paredes 2018;Staudt and Wagner 2018), one is qualitative (Robson and Sekhon 2011) and one uses a mixed methodology (Dominique-Ferreira 2018). This sample indicates that the study of the cancellation of insurance policies is predominantly conducted through empirical quantitative analysis.…”

“…The European publications are much more dispersed in terms of chronology. There is a special reference to an article by Larsson and Broström (2019), which was kindly disclosed ahead-of-print. A case study analysis…”

Customer Retention and Related Factors Analysis in Financial Services Company

“…In the end, customer satisfaction will influence consumer retention (Mahapatra & Kumar, 2017;Haripersad & Sookdeo, 2018). One of the previous research about financial industries reveals the need for "proactive retention", namely taking precautions to secure customer loyalty (Larsson & Broström, 2019).…”