The Covid-19 crisis has been hard on the insurance sector, inflicting setbacks that include loss of business, operational disruptions, workforce stress, and several others. For the industry, ramping up operations, cutting down on costs, reducing the time to market, and adapting to the post-pandemic world comprise the way to bounce back from the blows. And process integration is the tool that can help insurers to realize these seemingly difficult goals with enhanced efficiency.
| >> A McKinsey study claims that by 2025, about 25% of the insurance industry would be automated. >> A recent consumer survey revealed that digital access in the insurance sector has increased by nearly 30 percent since the Covid-19 pandemic began. |
Process integrations have always been a pivotal aspect of successful insurance operations, enabling organizations to gradually sunset the limitations of legacy insurance systems, outdated resources, and needlessly complex processes. The ongoing crisis has left insurers with just two choices – be in sync with the modern way of conducting business or perish; and digital integration of various complex insurance workflows, also called process integration, is the key to select the first option.
Process Integration – Relevance in the Insurance Landscape
In basic terms, insurance process integration refers to the practice of implementing a well-defined digital strategy to automate, integrate, and optimize the various vital processes that connect an insurance firm with its customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The plethora of benefits includes unmatched efficiency, better employee focus, a higher bottom line, and enhanced customer experience.
Fine-Tuned Communication
Efficient communication has always played a key role in the success of insurers. Both internal and external communications must be fine-tuned to get business back on track from the effects of the virus. For the teams of underwriters, customer service, and the like, well-integrated connectivity results in streamlined communications, which is otherwise a time-consuming and costly affair that hinders operations and threatens the already tight profit margins.
Powers the Productivity Wheel
| >> A survey on US insurance agents during the Covid-19 crisis revealed that 44% of agents rate digital tools as the primary capability that insurance companies should focus on to support them. |
With the majority of the insurance workforce working remotely due to the current restrictions, productivity has dropped visibly. As part of process integration, carriers are leveraging centralized platforms that make it easy for employees to minimize work errors, chargebacks, and processing delays. Process integration facilitates business orchestration and workflow automation that help in operations monitoring and data management, boosting the overall organizational efficiency.
| >> A survey of European insurance executives revealed that about 89 percent of them expect a significant acceleration in the digitization of processes to boost productivity. |
Beefed Up Data Security
Safeguarding sensitive information has always been a concern for insurers. The pandemic has alarmingly raised incidents of fraud, mistaken claims, and data security breaches, forcing carriers to look for robust data security and scrutiny measures. For the ones with an unintegrated IT environment, the roadblocks to managing the security requirements are massive. To resolve this, insurers need an ecosystem integration platform that offers encryption methods, security protocols, and additional security tools to ensure data safety and error-free claims management.
| >> With an average rise of 10% in fraudulent claims since 2010, insurance companies are looking for smarter and more effective fraud prevention technologies. |
A Push Toward Customer Delight
For insurers, the quality of customer engagement they offer now would decide customer loyalty for years to come. For the service team that’s overburdened with queries, system integration can be the magic wand. They can unearth hidden trends and customer sentiments by auto-analysis of customer data to devise ways of delivering a better experience.
| >> A whopping 61% of customers have confirmed that they prefer checking their insurance applications online. |
Also, handling queries get much easier with process integration benefits such as case ticketing, auto-case triaging, and request monitoring. The management can address customer concerns at distinct levels, which helps in rapid business growth.
Integration Challenges and Outsourcing to the Rescue
Alarming Data Worries
Thus far, the insurance sector has largely handled data manually by using archaic systems that result in poor data management. The absence of a centralized data storage system makes it difficult to digitize different business processes for integration. For process integration, data must be sourced from disparate systems, ensuring that it is cleansed and harmonized for deriving insights.
- Competent insurance process integrators ensure data integrity with up-to-date, complete, and consistent information by executing all the heavy lifting.
- External insurance service providers help their clients in extracting and analyzing data insights to drive valuable business decisions.
Frightening Process Complexity
Digital integration is a boon for the insurance landscape, but the process involves much more than connecting a set of tools or devices to each other. It comprises seamless automation of complex insurance processes such as quoting, policy issuance, underwriting, and others, which can be a difficult task for the less-experienced in-house IT teams of insurers.
- Reliable insurance service firms have the expertise to anticipate all possible interactions and scenarios between various connected systems and processes.
- They deploy cutting-edge tools to ensure successful process integration while keeping the associated costs surprisingly low.
Hassles of Support and Maintenance
For the majority of the insurance workforce, a modern digitized ecosystem involves change management, and the learning curve can be long. Also, the in-house IT team needs proper training sessions for the support and maintenance of the system, which can be a deterrent for the management, and it might resist any change to the existing system.
- Carriers can opt for post-implementation support services of insurance BPOs. Such firms offer flexible plans that make it easy for the client to focus on the core service areas.
- They help insurers to invest in the right technology, bringing all teams together and fostering a culture of data sharing for better process visibility.
| The willingness to collaborate amongst insurers has been increasing. >> 67% of insurance providers want to collaborate with insurance technology companies. >> More than 60% of insurers and Insur Techs want to collaborate with BigTech firms. |
With insurance processes getting more complex and the market more competitive, insurers have to grow at a fast rate. For optimum outcomes, they must streamline the different functions, applications, systems, and data that comprise their workflow. Thus, insurance process integration should be their natural choice to lead the competition in the post-pandemic era.
Who We Are and Why Our Expertise Matters
At Insurance BackOffice Pro, we have over a decade of experience in enabling insurance carriers and agencies to embrace digitization in the most seamless way. Our clients across the U.S. trust us to accelerate their business transformation even at a time like this when other industry players are struggling to stay afloat. Our seasoned industry professionals implement digital tools and frameworks to help our clients to lead the market and get back on the path to business growth.
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