Innovating the beneficiary experience and the importance of beneficiary care

Sean Burgess, an industry expert with three decades of experience, on innovations in beneficiary care, the importance of the beneficiary experience, and what sets life insurance apart from the rest of the insurance industry. 

In the life insurance space, you have to have compassion. You have to care about people. I've always told my kids growing up that I'm not in insurance, I'm in the job of helping people. And I believe that's a noble statement for the industry.

The difference between life insurance and other forms of insurance is that you're not repairing or replacing something. People have lost something that they can never get back. You are taking care of people at sometimes their lowest moment, and helping them see that there is a future, and not just from a financial standpoint - in fact, it's much more than that.

— Sean Burgess, Chief Claims Officer, Lemonade

I would encourage all carriers to do more, and there's a couple reasons for that. 

First of all, bereavement care and beneficiary care is so important, in fact, I would call it non-negotiable. You must have it as a carrier. And that's because, first of all, the beneficiary deserves it. But also from a life insurance carrier, it's an expectation, right? That you treat the beneficiary and you handle bereavement care, not only from a claim settlement perspective, but from an “all in” perspective of taking care of from start to finish - someone's going through an amazing amount of grief.

You know, empathy is filling that gap where the human aspect is gonna be there. And empathy and the technology and the platform it provides just allows that claims adjuster to provide more of that by using technology to keep the beneficiary better informed about the entire process.

Beneficiary care is probably one of the number one brand experiences for any carrier. When you have the type of loss that happens when a life insurance policy comes into play, that's the moment of truth. It's the brand moment that every carrier needs to lean into.

My advice for the industry, for someone that's been in and around the industry for decades is to treat beneficiary and bereavement care as an end-to-end experience and integrated human touch with technology, that's meant for today in the future.