By Kelli Svymbersky, Vice President of Payments
Accelerate IntelligentInsurance Experiences
Executive Summary
Insurance carriers have spent years investing in digital transformation. Claims intake has become more mobile. Estimates are increasingly automated. Customers can upload photos, receive status updates, and interact with insurers through digital channels. Yet one of the most important moments in the claim journey often remains fragmented, manual, and disconnected from the broader experience: the payment.
For policyholders, repair facilities, medical providers, attorneys, lenders, and other partners in the P&C ecosystem, the claim is not complete when a decision is made. It is complete when money moves accurately, securely, transparently, and in the way the recipient prefers. In that sense, payments are more than financial transactions; they are defining moments in the insurance experience.
This matters because claims remain a critical driver of loyalty. LexisNexis Risk Solutions found that policyholders with an auto claim switch insurance companies at a rate about 35% greater than similar policyholders who have not had a claim. The same research found that flight-risk customers were four times more likely to experience slow response times after FNOL, and that 45% of flight-risk customers spoke to three or more representatives to settle their claim, compared with 19% of loyalists. Meanwhile, J.D. Power found that satisfaction with digital insurance claims rose in 2024 as insurers added more mobile app capabilities, but also noted that channel-switching and delayed responses still create friction in the claims process.
The implication is clear: insurers cannot treat payments as a back-office step separated from the customer, employee, and partner experience. Payments have become a strategic lever for loyalty, efficiency, trust, and enterprise transformation in the Intelligent Experience era.
The next generation of insurance payments will be defined by three shifts:
1. Payments are the last mile of claims transformation.
A digital claim experience is incomplete if the final money movement remains slow, opaque, or manual.
2. Payments are an enterprise strategy, not only a claims tool.
Modernization must connect Claims, Finance, Treasury, IT, Operations, and the broader ecosystem around shared visibility and control.
3. The future of insurance payments is choice, connectivity, and intelligence.
Payment platforms must support varied payees, varied use cases, varied payment preferences, and increasingly data-rich workflows.
Together, these shifts point to a new operating model for insurers: one where payments are embedded into the flow of work, connected across the insurance ecosystem, and capable of powering intelligent experiences at scale.
The Claim Isn’t Over Until the Payment Is Delivered
Customer experience is no longer enough. Today’s insurance customers expect personalization, transparency, speed, and control across every interaction — especially during a claim. Payments are often the most overlooked moment in that journey, even though they can shape how customers remember the entire claims experience.
That expectation is being shaped outside the insurance industry. Consumers can send money instantly through peer-to-peer apps, track a package in real time, receive proactive alerts from their bank, and choose from multiple payment options at checkout. Businesses have also become more accustomed to digital payment workflows, automated remittance, and self-service status visibility.
Yet in insurance, the payment experience can still feel like a step backward. A policyholder may complete a digital FNOL process, upload photos through a mobile app, and receive claim updates electronically — only to wait for a paper check. A repair facility may complete work but need to call repeatedly for payment status. A finance team may reconcile payments across separate systems, disconnected files, or manual reports. An adjuster may spend time responding to “Where’s my payment?” inquiries instead of advancing claims.
This gap creates a strategic problem. It is not simply that payments are slow. It is that payment friction can undermine the value of every digital improvement that came before it.
The opportunity for insurers is to treat payments not as the final administrative task in a claim, but as a connected experience layer — one that can help improve satisfaction, reduce manual effort, strengthen partner relationships, and provide greater enterprise visibility.
Payments Are the Last Mile of Claims Transformation
For years, insurers have focused on digitizing the front and middle stages of claims. They have invested in intake, photo capture, virtual estimating, repair management, customer communications, AI-assisted decisioning, and digital workflows. These investments matter. J.D. Power found that overall satisfaction with the digital insurance claims process reached 871 on a 1,000-point scale in 2024, up 17 points from 2023, and that digital claims reporting now outperforms phone-based communication as the most satisfying way for customers to submit a new claim.1
But the same research also shows that digital transformation is not finished. J.D. Power reported that while 84% of claimants said their insurer provides an easy digital communication process, only 39% said their insurer always responds in a timely fashion to emails and text messages. It also found that nearly 20% of customers used more than one channel for the same question, creating a frustration point that reduced satisfaction by more than 100 points.1
That is where payments become critical. Payments are often the last mile of the claim — the point where the insurer’s promise becomes tangible. If that moment is delayed, confusing, or disconnected, the entire experience can suffer.
This is especially important because claims are closely tied to retention. LexisNexis Risk Solutions found that one-third of a carrier’s business could be at risk following an auto insurance claim, and that policyholders with an auto claim switch carriers at a rate about 35% greater than similar policyholders without a claim. The research also found that flight-risk customers were four times more likely to experience slow FNOL response times and more likely to speak to multiple representatives during claim settlement.
These findings reinforce an important point: customers do not evaluate the claim as a collection of separate operational steps. They experience it as one journey. A payment delay, a missing status update, or an unclear disbursement process can become the defining memory of the claim.
For insurers, this creates a new mandate. Digital claims transformation must extend all the way through money movement. The goal is not simply to replace a paper check with a digital option. The goal is to make the payment feel like a natural continuation of the claim: connected, visible, secure, and easy for the recipient.
That is the essence of Intelligent Experience: delivering outcomes optimized for every stakeholder — customers, employees, and partners — and turning claims into seamless, individualized experiences at scale. Payments are critical to that shift because they are the moment when the insurer’s promise becomes tangible.
Key message
A claim is not truly resolved when payment is approved. It is resolved when the right recipient receives the right funds, through the right method, with the right level of transparency.
Pillar 2: Payments Are an Enterprise Strategy, Not Only a Claims Tool
While the payment moment may be highly visible to customers and partners, the processes behind it are deeply cross-functional. Claims may initiate or approve a payment. Finance may control disbursement and reconciliation. Treasury may manage funding strategy and bank relationships. IT may own integrations. Operations may handle exceptions. Vendors and customers may create inbound service volume when payment status is unclear.
That complexity is why payment modernization cannot be treated as a narrow claims initiative. It must be approached as enterprise infrastructure.
Historically, many insurers have viewed insurer-to-shop payment use cases as too narrow to justify enterprise-level modernization on their own. To gain alignment across Claims, Finance, IT, and other stakeholders, payment strategies need to support a broader set of use cases and show value across the business.
That context is important. Claims leaders may feel the pain most visibly, but finance and treasury leaders often need different assurances: control over funds, reconciliation, reporting, risk mitigation, vendor enablement, compliance, and integration with existing systems. A solution that improves customer speed but creates operational complexity elsewhere will struggle to scale.
The broader market reflects this same enterprise reality. AFP/J.P. Morgan’s 2025 Digital Payments Survey found that 76% of respondents expect to update their payments strategy over the next three years, with the most common planned update being exploration of new payment formats and channels with expanded technology capability. The same survey found that B2B payments made by check declined to 26% in 2025, down from 33% in 2022, yet organizations still face barriers to full digitization.2
Fraud risk adds another enterprise imperative. AFP/Truist’s 2025 Payments Fraud and Control Survey found that 79% of organizations experienced actual or attempted payments fraud in 2024, and that checks remained the payment method most often subjected to attempted or actual fraud, cited by 63% of respondents. This makes paper-heavy payment processes not only inefficient, but a potential control and risk concern.3
For insurers, the business case spans multiple dimensions:
- Customer experience: faster, clearer, more flexible payment options.
- Employee experience: fewer manual status checks, fewer handoffs, less rework.
- Finance and treasury: better visibility, reporting, reconciliation, and funding control.
- IT: fewer disconnected point solutions and more scalable integrations.
- Partner relationships: improved transparency and reduced payment-related follow-up.
For insurers, these dimensions are connected. Modern payment strategies can give payees more flexibility in how they receive funds, provide more transparent status updates, and reduce manual work by connecting payors and payees before, during, and after payment. The value will vary by carrier, operating model, and payment mix, but the strategic opportunity is consistent: payments can improve experience while reducing operational friction across the enterprise.
The broader point is not that every insurer will see the same savings. The point is that payment modernization should be evaluated as a cross-functional transformation opportunity — one that can improve experience, reduce cost to serve, and increase visibility across the enterprise.
Key message
The insurers that modernize payments most effectively will not simply digitize disbursements. They will connect Claims, Finance, Treasury, IT, and Operations around a common payment strategy.
Pillar 3: The Future of Insurance Payments Is Choice, Connectivity, and Intelligence
If the first era of payment modernization was about replacing paper checks, the next era will be about enabling intelligent, connected payment experiences.
Insurance payments are inherently complex. A single carrier may need to pay policyholders, claimants, repair facilities, medical providers, attorneys, lenders, towing providers, salvors, rental companies, contractors, and other vendors. Payment use cases span all lines of business, including auto, property, casualty, subrogation, commercial lines, workers’ compensation, as well as policyholder refunds and traditional accounts payable, and more.
Each payee may have different expectations. Consumers may want speed and mobile-first convenience. Businesses may want remittance detail and reconciliation data. Finance teams may want reporting and controls. Claims teams may want payment status inside their workflow. Treasury may want flexible funding options. IT may want scalable, low-friction integration.
This is why the future of insurance payments must be built around choice, connectivity, and intelligence.
Choice
Choice matters because recipients increasingly expect to decide how they receive money. In insurance, that choice can build trust, support loyalty, and give policyholders, claimants, businesses, and ecosystem partners greater control over one of the most important moments in the claims journey.
Choice is not just a consumer convenience. It can also reduce administrative burden by shifting preference selection to the recipient and reducing follow-up calls or exceptions. For a business payee, choice may mean accepting a digital method that fits reconciliation workflows. For a consumer, it may mean choosing a familiar real-time or near-real-time option.
Choice is also a risk consideration. Asking internal teams to collect, manage, or route sensitive payment information does more than create extra work; it creates unnecessary exposure for the business. A more modern payment experience lets recipients select their preferred method through a secure workflow, reducing the burden on employees while helping insurers limit the handling of sensitive financial data.
Connectivity
Connectivity matters because payments do not happen in isolation. They are tied to claim events, approvals, coverage, reserves, repair status, vendor information, customer communication, and finance processes. If those data points live in separate systems, the payment experience becomes fragmented.
Connectivity matters because payments have historically lived outside many core claims workflows, creating friction, delays, and blind spots. Embedded payment capabilities can help tie payment activity and data directly to the claim, making it easier to initiate, track, and reconcile payments within the environments where claims teams already work.
This moves the conversation beyond “faster payments.” The more strategic question is: Can the payment carry context? Can it be linked to the claim event that triggered it? Can status flow back to the systems where teams work? Can reporting help finance and claims teams understand what happened without manual research?
Intelligence
Intelligence matters because every payment creates data. Over time, digitized payment workflows can help insurers better understand payment timing, method preference, exception patterns, vendor behavior, claim cycle impacts, and operational bottlenecks.
This is where payments become part of the broader Intelligent Experience strategy. The future is one where payments are no longer treated as the end of the process, but as a defining moment in the experience — supported by connected data, ecosystem workflows, and intelligent automation.
Enterprise payment infrastructure can support that future by giving insurers more visibility into what happens after payment approval. Instead of asking teams to chase status manually, the system can provide updates. Instead of relying on disconnected reports, payments data can contribute to analytics. Instead of adding a new point solution for every emerging rail or use case, an integrated platform can support adaptability over time.
Key message
The future of insurance payments is not simply digital. It is connected, data-rich, and capable of adapting to the needs of every stakeholder in the insurance ecosystem.
Bringing the Three Pillars Together: From Transaction to Experience Infrastructure
These three pillars work together because they tell one larger story.
Payments matter to the customer because they are the last mile of claims transformation. They matter to the business because they sit at the intersection of Claims, Finance, Treasury, IT, and Operations. They matter to the future because they create a foundation for choice, connectivity, and intelligence.
This is the shift insurers need to make: from viewing payments as a transaction to viewing payments as experience infrastructure.
That shift changes the questions insurers should ask.
Instead of asking:
How do we send this payment?
They should ask:
How do we deliver payments in a way that improves the experience, reduces operational friction, strengthens controls, and creates better visibility across the enterprise?
Instead of asking:
Which payment rail should we add next?
They should ask:
How do we future-proof our payment strategy so we can support evolving preferences, new use cases, and new ecosystem connections without creating new complexity?
Instead of asking:
How do we reduce checks?
They should ask:
How do we modernize the full money movement experience from payment initiation through reconciliation?
This is where enterprise outbound payment solutions can create differentiated value. They can help insurers close the gap between claim decision and claim resolution, reduce the burden on employees who bridge disconnected systems by hand, give finance and treasury leaders more visibility and control, and help policyholders and partners experience the insurer as modern, responsive, and easy to do business with.
What Insurers Should Look For in an Enterprise Payments Strategy
To move toward this future, insurers should evaluate payment modernization across several strategic dimensions:
1. End-to-end workflow integration
Payments should be embedded into the systems and workflows where claim and business decisions already happen. This reduces swivel-chair processes and helps payments become part of the natural flow of work.
2. Payee choice across B2C and B2B use cases
A modern strategy should support different payment preferences across consumers, businesses, and specialized insurance ecosystem partners. This is especially important because insurance payees are not one homogeneous group.
3. Real-time or near-real-time status visibility
Payment transparency can reduce inbound inquiries, improve employee productivity, and create more confidence for customers and partners.
4. Finance and treasury controls
An enterprise solution must support the needs of finance and treasury stakeholders, including reconciliation, funding visibility, reporting, and controls.
5. Scalability across lines of business
Payments modernization should not be limited to a single claims use case. To justify enterprise-level change, insurers should evaluate solutions that can scale across payment types, lines of business, and stakeholder needs rather than solving for one narrow workflow.
6. Data-rich payment events
The most valuable payment strategies connect transaction data with claim and operational context, supporting better reporting, auditing, analytics, and decision-making.
7. Fraud and risk mitigation
Fraud remains a significant concern. AFP/Truist reported that 79% of organizations experienced actual or attempted payments fraud in 2024, and checks were the payment method most often subjected to attempted or actual fraud.3
Conclusion: Intelligent Experiences Require Intelligent Payments
The insurance industry has entered a new phase of transformation. Customer experience is still essential, but it is no longer enough by itself. Insurers must now deliver experiences that are personalized, connected, efficient, and optimized for every stakeholder — customers, employees, partners, and the enterprise.
Payments are central to that shift.
They are a moment of truth for the customer. They are a source of operational complexity for employees. They are a control and visibility concern for finance and treasury. They are a relationship point for vendors and partners. And increasingly, they are a source of data that can help insurers understand and improve the broader claims journey.
The insurers that win the next era will not treat payments as an afterthought. They will build payment capabilities into the fabric of their claims and enterprise operations. They will give payees choice. They will give teams transparency. They will give finance and treasury better control. And they will turn money movement into a connected, intelligent experience.
In short: the future of claims transformation does not end with the claim decision. It ends when payment is delivered — and when every stakeholder has the clarity, confidence, and control they need along the way.
Ready to move beyond fragmented payment processes? CCC Payments helps insurers connect claims and payment workflows to deliver faster, more transparent, and more flexible payment experiences for customers, employees, and ecosystem partners.
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