Innovations in the postal sector. Episode 2: insurance services

We continue today our series of innovative services in the postal sector (read here episode 1) with a very interesting initiative of French postal operator La Poste. Not sure this one will be successful as it faces already some resistance.

Episode 2: insurance

Insurance services in the postal sector

La Poste is about to test a new project with Polyexpert to equip postmen with smartphones so that they can photograph damages in the homes of insured people. As part of this project, which only concerns damages to automobiles. Postmen would serve as collectors of digital images thanks to the Digishoot application which can locate and authenticate images taken with a smartphone. These pictures will then be used to evaluate damages at a distance.

The association of professional experts (Fédération des Sociétés d’Expertise or FSE and Compagnie des Experts or CEA) quickly reacted to stress that pictures can’t replace a real expertise. The expertise can however be complex (everyone seem to agree about that) such that La Poste has already announced that its initiative would be limited to low-value cases and claims that are not complex.

This trend follows a first step already taken by Generali to have customers document claims by themselves. The system is called Autofocus and allows individuals to take pictures of the damages through a dedicated application on their smartphone.

As you can see here, companies tend to involve customer more and more into their processes; another good example of co-creation (well in that case we should turn back to the original wording of “co-production”).