When it comes to speed records, ducks are hard­ly on par with, say, chee­tahs. But that hasn’t stopped sup­ple­men­tal insur­ance com­pa­ny Aflac and its spokes­duck from try­ing to sat­is­fy mod­ern cus­tomers who increas­ing­ly expect faster ser­vice with a sim­pli­fied sub­mis­sion process for claims that it says can result in pay­ments with­in 24 hours.

Sup­ple­men­tal insur­ance provider Aflac has intro­duced One Day Pay, an ini­tia­tive it says allows the com­pa­ny to receive, process, approve, and dis­burse pay­ments to pol­i­cy­hold­ers for eli­gi­ble claims with­in one busi­ness day.

That’s because the com­pa­ny has sim­pli­fied its claims sub­mis­sion process via online sys­tem Smart­Claim, which it says pro­vides easy-to-answer ques­tions to guide users. Once the ques­tions are answered, Smart­Claim iden­ti­fies the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments the pol­i­cy­hold­er needs to upload before the claim is sub­mit­ted and pro­cess­ing begins, the brand says.

If an eli­gi­ble claim is sub­mit­ted with all sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion via Smart­Claim by 3 p.m. ET Mon­day to Fri­day, Aflac says it will process, approve, and dis­burse pay­ment for the claim with­in one busi­ness day. To receive pay­ments faster, direct deposit enroll­ment is also avail­able.

Smart­Claim is avail­able for many indi­vid­ual claims, regard­less of whether they are sim­ple, mod­er­ate, or com­plex, Aflac says. That includes approx­i­mate­ly 70 per­cent of indi­vid­ual poli­cies in force, accord­ing to Michael Zuna, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at Aflac, not­ing Smart­Claim is not avail­able for short term dis­abil­i­ty (exclud­ing acci­dent and sick­ness rid­ers), life, vision, den­tal, Medicare sup­ple­ment, long-term care/home health care and health care reform rid­ers.

“A lot of insur­ance com­pa­nies talk about how much mon­ey they’ll save pol­i­cy­hold­ers on pre­mi­ums, but peo­ple buy insur­ance to get paid,” Zuna said. “We make it a pri­or­i­ty to not only pay claims fast – but also process claims fast. We know that pol­i­cy­hold­ers who’ve had an ill­ness or acci­dent also have expens­es that won’t wait.”

In oth­er words, One Day Pay is an effort to sat­is­fy mod­ern cus­tomers who have come to expect imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion thanks in large part to the dig­i­tal realm. In fact, Aflac cites research that shows 81 per­cent of Face­book and Twit­ter users want a same-day response to ques­tions and com­plaints.

“Along with this increased pace of life, con­sumers are pushed to bear more of the cost and respon­si­bil­i­ty for their health care in the new health care envi­ron­ment, so they expect more from their health care insur­ance part­ners than ever before,” Zuna said. “We under­stand that and for the past sev­en years, we’ve been pro­cess­ing and pay­ing most claims in an aver­age of four days. One Day Pay is sim­ply the nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion of the way we’ve been doing busi­ness.”

To pro­mote One Day Pay, Aflac says it is launch­ing “the largest, most inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing cam­paign in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry” and the brand will “bring the One Day Pay ini­tia­tive to life in com­pelling ways across a wide vari­ety of media.”

That includes skip­ping com­mer­cial breaks dur­ing tele­vi­sion events to bring view­ers back to the pro­gram­ming they want. This “accel­er­at­ed com­mer­cial break expe­ri­ence” debuted for view­ers watch­ing the E! “Live From the Red Car­pet” show pri­or to the Gram­mys on Feb­ru­ary 8 and will con­tin­ue through­out the year with humor­ous skits about speed on Jim­my Kim­mel Live, as well as on FX, where Aflac says it will fer­ry con­sumers to the sus­pense­ful end­ings of pop­u­lar movies quick­er, and in major sport­ing events like the Day­tona 500, where the brand will also help speed view­ers to the finales.

Accord­ing to Zuna, each “accel­er­at­ed com­mer­cial break expe­ri­ence” will vary depend­ing on the pro­gram, but view­ers can expect Aflac to take over an entire com­mer­cial break and skip the com­mer­cials with­out the wait “in at least five tele­vi­sion events with­in the next month or two.”

This, Zuna says, “focus­es on Aflac’s com­mit­ment to speed…No mat­ter what con­sumers are watch­ing or inter­est­ed in, we want to offer view­ers more of what they want, with­out the wait.”

Fans of the Aflac Duck on Face­book and Twit­ter will also get a glimpse of the claims process behind the scenes through a series of videos in which Aflac Claims Spe­cial­ists share their per­spec­tives on how pro­cess­ing and pay­ing claims quick­ly pos­i­tive­ly impacts Aflac pol­i­cy­hold­ers, the brand says. The con­tent is intend­ed to “help bring a human touch to Aflac’s claims expe­ri­ence” and will be aggre­gat­ed on Aflac’s One Day Pay Tum­blr page.

What do you think of Aflac’s effort to meet the needs of mod­ern con­sumers?