Originally published on LinkedIn.
The Insurance Times recently put a question to the market: has the insurance industry reached a tipping point where claims performance, rather than price, determines which firms win or lose?
The honest answer, from the experts consulted, is not yet. Price still leads. In the current economic environment, it would be surprising if it did not. But the three senior professionals asked, all pointed to the same shift: claims experience is rising fast, and the gap between it and price as a competitive differentiator is closing in a way that insurers can no longer treat as a future problem.
Gracechurch Consulting's Ben Bolton put numbers to it: claims now ranks second only to price when brokers place business, a significant shift from just a few years ago when it barely featured. Insurance DataLab's Matt Scott offered the starkest evidence of what that means in practice: according to their Commercial Lines Claims Pulse survey, brokers who have had a positive claims experience are almost ten times more likely to place business with the same insurer than those who have had a negative one. Scott also pointed to the recent Which? Super complaint as a signal that external pressure on claims handling is intensifying and that price alone is no longer sufficient if the experience falls short when it matters most. FM's Benedict McKenna captured the shift well: when a loss occurs, clients judge insurers on how quickly they respond, how well they communicate, and how effectively they support their operational recovery. Insurers that deliver on that build trust and loyalty that pricing alone cannot secure.
The experts are aligned on where the market is heading, but where the real value lies is in understanding the granular drivers of customer experience within claims.
To better understand this, we analysed what general insurance and life and pension customers were saying publicly about their claims over a two-year period, capturing the findings in the DataEQ UK Insurance Index, produced in collaboration with PwC. Unlike traditional survey data, where customers reflect days later in a format the company controls, this captures what people chose to post on X and Trustpilot, unfiltered, in their own words, when the experience was still raw. The picture that produces is harder to manage than a score. It is also more honest.
Overall claims experience Net Sentiment for general insurers stood at -26%, while for life and pension providers, it was -11%, placing them both firmly in negative territory.
The specific pain points were precise and consistent. Claims status was the single largest issue for general insurers, with Net Sentiment of -88%. Nearly half of all turnaround time complaints were specifically about not knowing where a claim stood, not about the outcome itself. Customers were not primarily frustrated that claims take time. They were frustrated that nobody told them what was happening while they waited.
For life and pension customers, turnaround time Net Sentiment sat at -54%, compounded by documentation processes that required already-grieving families to resubmit information they had already provided.
Across various channels and touchpoints that customers used during the claims process, the story was consistent.
Email Net Sentiment was -78% for general insurers and -80% for life and pension providers, with customers citing slow responses and automated replies that failed to resolve their issues. The call centre, when spoken about online, carried a Net Sentiment of -63% for general insurers. Customers cited long wait times, difficulty reaching agents, and repeated transfers without resolution. For life and pension customers, the call centre was also often a source of frustration, returning Net Sentiment of -45%, with the impact felt most acutely during sensitive moments such as bereavement. Even digital channels, increasingly seen as the smoother alternative, returned a website Net Sentiment of -57% for general insurers and -44% for life and pension, with complaints around login failures, slow response times and a lack of real-time claims updates.
McKenna's observation that customers want clarity, momentum and technical credibility, not just a cheque at the end of a long process, is confirmed precisely by this data. The industry's biggest claims failure is not the decision. It is the communication gap between the decision being made and the customer knowing about it.
The same dataset was equally clear about what drove positive experience. Staff and insurers who communicated proactively, explained the process without being asked, and treated customers with patience, received consistent positive feedback. Life and pension’s overall staff sentiment reached +60%. The data points to the importance of the human element in assisting clients in difficult moments.
The drivers of positive experience are consistent across both sectors: prompt updates, clear explanations of what is happening and why, and staff who remain composed when customers are not. McKenna's description of pre-loss planning, on-site loss adjusters empowered to make advance payments, and a claims team the client already knows before a loss occurs is a description of exactly what the unfiltered data rewards.
The vulnerability data sharpens the stakes. Vulnerability factors in claims carried Net Sentiment of -93% for general insurers and -78% for life and pension providers. These were customers already under strain, physically, psychologically, financially, reaching out at the exact moment the policy was supposed to matter. What they described publicly included perceived delay tactics, repeated demands for information already submitted, and a sense of being managed rather than supported.
That is not a claims efficiency problem. That is a trust problem. And as Scott's ten-times multiplier suggests, trust compounds. A customer who has been through a poor claims experience does not re-enter the market as a price-sensitive buyer. They re-enter it as someone looking for evidence that the next insurer will behave differently.
Bolton is right that brokers are filtering panels more carefully, directing business towards insurers that can demonstrate consistent, high-quality claims performance. What the public sentiment data adds to that is a view of the customer before the broker gets involved. The raw, unmanaged reaction to a claims experience as it happens, not as it is later reported. That is where reputations are made and lost. And that is exactly where most insurers currently have the least visibility.
The sentiment data suggests that for customers who have already made a claim, this experience is critical to retaining clients. Price wins the first policy. Claims experience determines whether it is renewed.
The organisations that understand that distinction, and act on it, will not need to compete on price alone. As measurement of claims experience becomes more sophisticated, the gap between those who are getting it right and those who are not will become increasingly difficult to ignore.
DataEQ, in collaboration with PwC, published the UK Insurance Index tracking claims sentiment across general insurers and life and pension providers over a two-year period. To access the full report or discuss what your customers are saying about their claims experience, contact jamie.botha@goodoutcomes.ai