Wedou Rolls Out a Bot for Borrowers’ Insurance
On September 1st, the InsurTech Wedou launched the first chatbot for borrowers’ insurance in France. This service called “eWedou” helps mortgage subscribers assess the amounts they may save, right from Facebook Messenger.
Wedou specialises in the insurance market, which special focus on borrowers’ insurance, enabling individual customers to cancel the contract they subscribed with their bank and save significant amounts of money. This service is set within the framework of the Bourquin Amendment from January 2018.
The “eWedou” chatbot is available 24/7 via Facebook Messenger. It appears as a conversation, during which several questions are asked to the borrower (date of birth, current terms and conditions of his contract, etc.). Eventually, once informed of the amount he could save, he may subscribe a new borrowers’ insurance contract also using the “eWedou” bot. This service will soon be made available on WhatsApp and Telegram, too.
This bot has been designed to give priority to customer experience, and help Wedou face competition from other market specialists. Wedou mostly addresses borrowers ages 25 to 42, it doesn’t require a medical examination. The contract is also signed online.
Comments – Borrowers’ insurance in the digital age’ too
Since January this year, the Bourquin Amendment has been allowing 12 million French customers (source: Wedou) to renegotiate their borrowers’ insurance when their contract reaches its anniversary date. With this new service, Wedou stands out as the first full-digital option for renegotiating these contracts in France. Their focus on a digital approach is also a way for them to improve customer experience, letting go of much-dreaded administrative hurdles generally associated with cancelling and changing these contracts. In just three months, Wedou has attracted more than 140,000 customers.
Several industry players are now betting on digital strategies when it comes to dealing with borrowers insurance (Allianz France, Verlingue, Linxo and Fluo, etc.). Some have also built comparison websites (Allianz, Inixia). The idea of a conversational agent hadn’t, however, been applied to this sector until this launch. According to the American consulting firm Gartner, 25% of the customer services worldwide will be relying on chatbots by 2020. This technology could save up to 27 billion hours in customer relation services by 2023. These figures highlight how central these tools have become, especially in industries where customers do not hesitate to change contract on several occasions.