Brokers have been slow to adopt social media and digital technologies as a whole, which is hampering their ability to keep the clients satisfied during the lockdown, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

The entire industry will face a changing landscape due to new businesses practices and a worldwide recession, following the crisis. However, the broker channel is particularly reliant on meeting clients and it generally does not have the expertise or existing infrastructure in digital channels to make up for that. 

GlobalData’s 2016-20 UK Broker Surveys shows that they have made little progress in adopting social media engagement, claims tracking processes or online chat facilities, within these five-year period.

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Bartosz Golba, Head of Financial Services at GlobalData, comments: “Brokers have suffered during the COVID-19 outbreak given that their businesses rely on face-to-face meetings and client engagement. Brokers will be inundated with queries from their clients about potential insured losses. Digital technologies would be extremely helpful to ease these concerns; however, most brokers in the UK do not have this capability. ”

Our survey data highlights that not only have they not grown these key digital technologies over the past five years, they continue to say they will and not follow through with it. They appear to understand the importance, but it has not been a top priority.

Golba concludes: “Unfortunately, a global incident, such as a pandemic, has exposed these flaws, and they will struggle to keep clients satisfied while face-to-face meetings are not possible.”