Appealing to Hispanic consumers is a tricky business, Chattanooga-area executives say. While simply translating forms and signs into Spanish is a good start, in some cases it takes a bit more to woo those customers.
Unum Group this summer finished translation of its “evidence of insurability” form into Spanish, a two-year project and a vital step in reaching out to Spanish-speaking workers, officials say.
The form is important for anyone who wants insurance, as it determines his risk to insurers.
Gladys Pineda-Loher, who has plans to start a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Chattanooga, said Unum’s project is “a good start.”
“At the end of the day, it’s important for us to make the process easier, and to help Hispanics understand their options,” Pineda-Loher said. “As employers push benefits’ cost to employees, we’re going to all have to be much more educated on insurance.”
But it’s not as easy as copying and pasting the English version into Google Translate, according to Bilda Acuna, assistant vice president of Hispanic markets at Unum.
“Like everything you do in the insurance world, every state has a different version because of regulations,” she said.
For each of 46 states in which Unum uses the Spanish version of the form, the document first had to be translated, then checked by attorneys, edited, re-checked for translation errors, submitted to a yearlong state approval process, internally re-verified for accuracy and re-checked by the internal translator before it could be released to customers, she said.
But for other important documents, “we haven’t even scratched the surface,” Acuna said.
“On our group products, we’re good at every touch-point, but the individual products like accident insurance and term life, we’re still in the process of translating and filing those,” she said, a process that could take years.
Efforts are under way at insurers BlueCross BlueShield and Cigna to reach out to Hispanics as well, officials say.
“We are in the process of developing Spanish translation materials,” said Roy Vaughn, director of communications for BlueCross. “We have not experienced a great need thus far but anticipate more future requests.”
In the meantime, the insurer has responded to the growing need for Spanish language services by connecting customers with Spanish translators on an as-needed basis, Vaughn said.
Cigna has taken a different approach, and attempts are under way to streamline all the insurer’s communications, with Spanish language materials being at the forefront of those efforts, according to spokeswoman Judy Hartling.
“Instead of simply translating the information we have, Cigna has formed a work group to review existing Spanish materials, and review clinical projects that focus on specific cultural groups,” Hartling said of the program that is expected to continue through 2011.
Cigna also has begun removing industry jargon, buzzwords and acronyms from company communications to make it easier for all customers to understand their insurance plan, she said.
No one knows what effect these changes will have on consumer behavior, as slowdowns in the construction and carpet industries in the Chattanooga and Dalton areas have driven some Hispanics to seek other places to live, according to press reports.
However, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, Jeffrey Passel found that overall trends don’t support the hypothesis that legal and illegal immigrants are heading home in droves.
“The current recession has had a harsh impact on employment of Latino immigrants, raising the question of whether an increased number of Mexican-born residents are choosing to return home,” Passel wrote. But he noted that “updated information through the first quarter of this year continues to show no increase in return migration to Mexico.”
Regardless, Spanish-speaking customers will continue to be important consumers for insurers to target, officials say, and each company will continue to try to reach out to Hispanics in their own language.