More than 25 million travelers trust Allianz Global Assistance USA each year to protect them while they’re away from home. In these uncertain times, travel agents especially can understand the need to protect their clients’ travel investments against unexpected disruptions.
Just as important as booking travel insurance for clients is determining the best provider to sell. Daniel Durazo, director of communications for Allianz Global Assistance USA, understands the confidence travel partners put in the travel insurance and assistance provider and is delighted with the dedication to clients the company has shown in return over the past two decades.
Lending a Helping Hand
“We’ve been a leader in the travel insurance industry for more than 20 years,” says Durazo. “And we’re very proud of how we take care of our travel agent partners’ customers. Every year we receive 10,000 requests for help from travelers. Of those 3,600 are calls for help with a medical problem.
“And every year we transport more than 500 customers who require evacuation by an air ambulance or some other means,” he added. When local medical facilities do not have the necessary equipment to treat an American patient, they are airlifted back to the U.S. via an air ambulance, which could cost them, if uninsured, between $50,000 and $200,000. Yet according to an Allianz Global Assistance Wave Season Survey conducted in March, more than half of the 1,529 respondents (56.1 percent) believed that it would cost less than this. It’s these types of misunderstanding Allianz is continuously working on improving through marketing initiatives and smart partnerships; however, there’s always room for progress and Durazo sees “a lot of room for growth in the U.S. travel insurance market.
We’ve been a leader in the travel insurance industry for more than 20 years. And we’re very proud of how we take care of our travel agent partners’ customers.
– Daniel Durazo, Director of Communications,
Allianz Global Assistance USA
“In five years we think that travel insurance will be very main stream and that most consumers will understand the value of travel insurance and will elect to purchase it when they book their trip,” he says. “The world has become a very interesting and dynamic place and it seems that every day we’re seeing new challenges that impact travel.
“We’ve had everything recently from severe weather to terrorism to Zika and more that effect traveler’s plans and we expect this trend will continue. None of this should stop anyone from traveling, but we think an informed consumer is going to elect to purchase travel insurance to protect their travel investment and get help if they run into trouble while traveling.”
Travel Insurance Made Easy
At present, Allianz is launching a number of innovations and improvements to simplify its claims process. “We’ve recently rolled out a suite of innovations to make filing a claim easier, and getting paid faster,” says Durazo. “One thing consumers don’t like is a lengthy claims process. We’ve addressed this by redesigning our claims forms so they’re easier to understand and easier to use,” therefore, reducing the amount of time clients spend filing a claim and the back and forth involved when clients submit an incomplete claim.
In addition to having the ability to file a claim online using any mobile device, clients can also file claims directly from Allianz’s new and improved TravelSmart mobile app. The TravelSmart app provides travelers with real time flight information, important medical resources, international emergency numbers, access to travel insurance information, international emergency phone numbers, a database of hospitals in 129 countries and one touch dialing to reach travel assistance and customer service. Taking it a step further, Allianz Global Assistance is leveraging its digital capabilities to provide clients with expedited service.
“In May, we’re going to have the ability to pay people via their debit card. We also just launched direct deposit for claims payments, and we think that some customers may actually get paid within 48 hours of filing a claim. Plus, between this year and the next, we’ll continue to roll out innovations that improve the way we interact with consumers and partners. These innovation initiatives are a result of our increased focus on the 
customer experience,” he says.
“We use software to survey and gain insight from thousands of customers every week and…use that data in a continuous feedback loop that informs our decision-making.” Gathering this data is critical, but even more crucial is finding opportunities to apply the data.
“Frequently we’ll get very specific suggestions about how to make our processes more customer friendly. In a recent survey we asked, “How could we have made it easier for you to understand your benefits and services?”; and there was a lot of feedback that we received and one thing that came out that we implemented was a bullet list of benefits of on insurance and simpler and shorter descriptions.
We’ve also been trying to reduce what we call “insurance speak,” so we rewrote our policy documents to make the language easier to understand and we created a declarations page, which is just a brief list that summarizes coverage and benefits. All of these are the kind of things that come out of our customer experience initiative and we’re very proud of our focus on that.”
CONTACT INFORMATION
For more on Allianz Worldwide Partners:
allianzworldwidepartners.com/usa
To book travel insurance online: agentmaxonline.com
