Online insurance claims: when more than trust matters

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical framework explaining the adoption of online insurance claims characterised by infrequent interactions, inherent complexity and risk. It extends the technology acceptance model to include knowledge-related and trust-related beliefs. Design/methodology/approach The framework is tested with structural equation modelling using data from a survey of 292 customers who made online insurance claims. Findings are further explained through 30 telephone interviews conducted with online and offline claimants. Findings Previous research in financial services has shown trust to be equally or more important than perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use in forming attitudes towards adopting online insurance applications. The findings of this paper contradict this by showing, at best, a weak relationship between trusting attitude and intention to use the online service. Trust is somewhat meaningful; however, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and technology attitude are substantially more important in an online insurance claims setting. Research limitations/implications Contradictory results always beg further research to assure their robustness. Nevertheless, they can also point to a developing trend where trust in the internet channel, per se, is of diminishing importance. Internet and product knowledge are not as pertinent to forming intentions as usefulness and ease of use. Practical implications To encourage customers to adopt online applications for a trusted company, all emphasis should be on user friendliness and perceived usefulness of the online interface. Originality/value Compared to other channels, consumers are no longer naïve or distrustful of the online channel for interacting with a firm. If they perceive usefulness and ease of use, they will adopt the offered service.

A Matter of Trust? Examination of Chatbot Usage in Insurance Business

“…Whereas the findings of previous trust research do not currently indicate that major cultural differences are to be expected (e.g. [5]), in terms of privacy concerns might be country-specific differences. An explicit investigation of cultural differences, especially in the context of ICB attempting to provide more human-like interactions through advanced NLP techniques, could make a key scientific contribution.…”

“…The above findings suggest the existence of context-related preferences in the trade-off between practical use and trust. In the specific case of ICB, this implies that users are willing to rely upon ICB, if they consider the expected result, e.g., to report an insurance claim, as high enough to make the effort to interact with the ICB [5].…”

“…But an extension of the model to include technology-specific external variables [21,23,26] is recommended to strengthen the predictive and explanatory power [27]. We have done this by including the variables trust and privacy concerns, following the approach of previous studies on trust and technology acceptance (see e.g., [5,21,26] as well as on privacy concerns and technology acceptance (see e.g., [22,26,28] in diverse application areas.…”

“…In the context of our research, we define the intention to interact with ICB as the desire of a potential or current insurance customer to use a computerized text-based dialog system to accomplish a specific insurance-related goal or task. Empirically, the relevance of perceived ease of use has been proven by various studies (see e.g., [5]). Likewise, some recent studies, such as Müller et al [8] have underlined the role of the discernible level of naturalness in the interaction with chatbots as a mediating variable for their acceptance.…”

“…In the insurance sector, however, it is much more difficult to adopt new technologies such as chatbots than in other application areas due to various legacy regulations for online systems [5,6]. This is because, in data-rich contexts with high levels of sensitive data, as in the insurance sector, the safe processing of customer-related data and the protection of privacy are major challenges to prevent that customers may suffer harm through financial loss or physical and psychological damage [7].…”