This submit is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
At present’s insurance coverage businesses depend on a mean of 5.7 to 11.9 totally different expertise platforms for day-to-day operations, relying on their whole income. For big-scale carriers managing a number of businesses and their downstream producers, it’s probably that quantity is even greater. Whereas this stage of digital innovation represents a optimistic change within the insurance coverage business’s means to supply fashionable experiences to its shoppers and environment friendly workflows to its workers, cultivating a extra sturdy tech stack doesn’t come with out challenges.
Every time an insurance coverage group invests in a brand new digital resolution, it’s creating larger efficiencies for at the least one piece of the insurance coverage distribution puzzle. When a enterprise begins out, it could solely have the sources to buy essentially the most important expertise, like an e mail software and a bookkeeping software program. Because the enterprise grows, it invests in additional expertise to assist handle the rise in shoppers and workers — an HR system, a buyer relationship administration (CRM) system, a compliance administration resolution, and so forth.
Whereas these methods little doubt create larger efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra complicated your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it could turn into. In truth, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and businesses buy extra methods, they uncover some huge issues.
How does a fancy tech stack influence your insurance coverage enterprise?
Poor integration capabilities result in fragmented methods
The extra methods you add to your tech stack, the extra essential it’s for these applied sciences to speak with each other. However with as a lot as 74 p.c of insurance coverage firms nonetheless counting on legacy expertise for his or her core enterprise capabilities, seamlessly linking current methods to new ones in order that they perform collectively in a significant manner isn’t precisely the norm. Older methods use totally different knowledge codecs, protocols, and constructions than fashionable options. These variations may cause vital compatibility points that make integrations extra complicated and finally result in system fragmentation.
Silos restrict sensible, data-driven enterprise choices
Your distribution channel is crammed with knowledge on each downstream companion you’re employed with. Proactive insurance coverage organizations use this knowledge to intelligently broaden, contract, and restructure their distribution channels in response to shifting market alternatives and challenges. Consequently, data-driven companies are 23 occasions extra prone to purchase new clients and 19 occasions extra prone to obtain above-average profitability than their much less data-driven counterparts. Nevertheless, knowledge silos, a standard symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of methods, make it troublesome to leverage producer knowledge for knowledgeable choices. Silos forestall producer knowledge from flowing seamlessly by your methods, creating a number of variations of fact in your information and making it troublesome to decipher the place essentially the most correct info really lives.
Scalability points forestall worthwhile development
In relation to sustainable development, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage business. For instance, nowadays, with the fitting distribution channel administration resolution, any service onboarding an company and its a number of downstream producers can validate a number of licenses throughout a number of strains of authority and a number of states all on the click on of a button. Not all that way back, the identical course of was solely achievable by hours, if not days, of guide work. Nevertheless, not all automations are created equally and plenty of legacy applied sciences lack the flexibility to scale effectively, making it simply as troublesome to develop with out additionally rising overhead prices.
Disjointed methods enhance safety and compliance dangers
Complicated and ever-changing regulatory necessities type the spine of the insurance coverage business (significantly, we’ve an entire collection about it), making compliance more and more complicated to take care of. Staying on prime of laws and avoiding penalties is especially difficult if you’re coping with disjointed methods which are unable to replace in real-time, creating inconsistencies in your distribution community knowledge. On prime of compliance danger, knowledge safety is a significant concern for companies with a fancy tech infrastructure. In a examine inspecting the state of cybersecurity throughout the insurance coverage sector, SecurityScorecard discovered that third-party software program and IT vulnerabilities had been accountable for half of the information breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage corporations.
Finances predictions reveal a larger concentrate on decreasing IT complexity
Between the pitfalls of a fancy tech stack and the ongoing market volatility and consequent price range tightening of the previous few years, it could come as a suprise that consultants predict an enhance in tech spend throughout the insurance coverage business over the following yr. However, digging just a little deeper into the place and the way companies plan to make use of these funds paints a clearer image.
With talks of tech consolidation from big-name gamers like GEICO, and larger stress on IT departments to ship sooner ROI, it’s probably we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, complicated technological overhauls and larger funding in lower-lift, modular options to assist consolidate fragmented infrastructure, cut back vendor administration complexities, simplify workflows, and unlock deeper knowledge analytic capabilities.
The main target shift makes much more sense when you think about the truth that many insurance coverage carriers and businesses have already invested a long time of time and hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into their current methods. In relation to their IT, these people aren’t seeking to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re on the lookout for complement options that may increase their effectivity with as little enterprise interruption as potential.
The answer: Investing in APIs to cut back tech complexity and increase operational effectivity
For companies with current distribution channel administration ecosystems, software programming interfaces (APIs) supply an answer for enhancing operational effectivity with out ripping and changing present methods. Modernizing giant and sophisticated methods, like these used to handle your insurance coverage distribution channels, can take months or years. APIs cut back tech complexity and get essentially the most full and up-to-date producer knowledge flowing by your methods extra rapidly and effectively than ever earlier than. Carriers and businesses that put money into APIs profit from their:
Improved integration capabilities: APIs combine instantly into a corporation’s current platforms, opening the door for extra seamless knowledge trade between disparate methods and eliminating bottlenecks in day by day workflows.
Seamless, safe scalability: By leveraging APIs that derive knowledge from business sources of fact, companies can focus much less of their time and sources on knowledge upkeep as their enterprise grows, and extra on benefiting from the tech infrastructure that drives their core enterprise processes.
Actual-time knowledge: APIs can elevate distribution community knowledge high quality by synchronizing a corporation’s current tech (and the information that lives inside it) with business sources of fact. Reasonably than counting on guide knowledge validation, APIs routinely guarantee producer knowledge is all the time up-to-date and helpful.
By leveraging APIs, insurance coverage carriers and businesses can rework their tech infrastructure from complicated, fragmented, and inefficent to agile, linked, and fashionable. Consequently, they’ll keep away from spending the money and time wanted to finish a complete system overhaul and achieve larger visibility into their distribution channel knowledge throughout their current platforms.
Let AgentSync’s ProducerSync API meet you the place you’re at
If tech complexity is obstructing key distribution channel knowledge from flowing by your current methods, then your knowledge’s not doing you a lot good. From surfacing key producer knowledge when and the place you want it (suppose earlier than binding a coverage or paying out a fee), to extremely subtle analyses on tips on how to optimize your distribution channel for optimum success, ProducerSync API will be the tech enhancement what you are promoting wants on the value and implementation timeline it desires.
Contact one in all our consultants as we speak to learn how your group may benefit from ProducerSync API.
