This publish is a part of a sequence sponsored by AgentSync.
In the present day’s insurance coverage companies depend on a median of 5.7 to 11.9 totally different expertise platforms for day-to-day operations, relying on their complete income. For giant-scale carriers managing a number of companies and their downstream producers, it’s doubtless that quantity is even greater. Whereas this degree of digital innovation represents a constructive change within the insurance coverage business’s capacity to supply trendy experiences to its shoppers and environment friendly workflows to its workers, cultivating a extra strong tech stack doesn’t come with out challenges.
Every time an insurance coverage group invests in a brand new digital answer, it’s creating better efficiencies for not less than 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 utility and a bookkeeping software program. Because the enterprise grows, it invests in additional expertise to assist handle the rise in purchasers and workers — an HR system, a buyer relationship administration (CRM) system, a compliance administration answer, and so forth.
Whereas these methods little doubt create better efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra complicated your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it could actually grow to be. In truth, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and companies buy extra methods, they uncover some large issues.
How does a posh 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 corporations nonetheless counting on legacy expertise for his or her core enterprise capabilities, seamlessly linking present methods to new ones in order that they perform collectively in a significant manner isn’t precisely the norm. Older methods use totally different information codecs, protocols, and constructions than trendy options. These variations could cause vital compatibility points that make integrations extra complicated and finally result in system fragmentation.
Silos restrict good, data-driven enterprise choices
Your distribution channel is full of information on each downstream associate you’re employed with. Proactive insurance coverage organizations use this information to intelligently develop, contract, and restructure their distribution channels in response to shifting market alternatives and challenges. In consequence, data-driven companies are 23 occasions extra more likely to purchase new clients and 19 occasions extra more likely to obtain above-average profitability than their much less data-driven counterparts. Nonetheless, information silos, a standard symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of methods, make it troublesome to leverage producer information for knowledgeable choices. Silos forestall producer information from flowing seamlessly by way of your methods, creating a number of variations of reality in your information and making it troublesome to decipher the place essentially the most correct data really lives.
Scalability points forestall worthwhile development
Relating to sustainable development, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage business. For instance, as of late, with the appropriate distribution channel administration answer, any service onboarding an company and its a number of downstream producers can validate a number of licenses throughout a number of traces 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 way of hours, if not days, of guide work. Nonetheless, not all automations are created equally and lots of legacy applied sciences lack the power 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 kind the spine of the insurance coverage business (severely, we have now an entire sequence about it), making compliance more and more complicated to take care of. Staying on prime of rules and avoiding penalties is especially difficult whenever you’re coping with disjointed methods which might be unable to replace in real-time, creating inconsistencies in your distribution community information. On prime of compliance threat, information safety is a significant concern for companies with a posh tech infrastructure. In a research analyzing the state of cybersecurity throughout the insurance coverage sector, SecurityScorecard discovered that third-party software program and IT vulnerabilities have been guilty for half of the info breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage companies.
Finances predictions reveal a better concentrate on lowering IT complexity
Between the pitfalls of a posh tech stack and the ongoing market volatility and consequent price range tightening of the previous few years, it could come as a suprise that specialists predict an enhance in tech spend throughout the insurance coverage business over the subsequent 12 months. 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 better strain on IT departments to ship quicker ROI, it’s doubtless we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, complicated technological overhauls and better funding in lower-lift, modular options to assist consolidate fragmented infrastructure, cut back vendor administration complexities, simplify workflows, and unlock deeper information analytic capabilities.
The main target shift makes much more sense when you think about the truth that many insurance coverage carriers and companies have already invested a long time of time and thousands and thousands of {dollars} into their present methods. Relating to their IT, these people aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re in search of complement options that may enhance their effectivity with as little enterprise interruption as doable.
The answer: Investing in APIs to scale back tech complexity and enhance operational effectivity
For companies with present distribution channel administration ecosystems, utility programming interfaces (APIs) provide an answer for enhancing operational effectivity with out ripping and changing present methods. Modernizing massive 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 information flowing by way of your methods extra rapidly and effectively than ever earlier than. Carriers and companies that spend money on APIs profit from their:
Improved integration capabilities: APIs combine instantly into a company’s present platforms, opening the door for extra seamless information alternate between disparate methods and eliminating bottlenecks in each day workflows.
Seamless, safe scalability: By leveraging APIs that derive information from business sources of reality, companies can focus much less of their time and sources on information upkeep as their enterprise grows, and extra on taking advantage of the tech infrastructure that drives their core enterprise processes.
Actual-time information: APIs can elevate distribution community information high quality by synchronizing a company’s present tech (and the info that lives inside it) with business sources of reality. Fairly than counting on guide information validation, APIs mechanically guarantee producer information is at all times up-to-date and helpful.
By leveraging APIs, insurance coverage carriers and companies can remodel their tech infrastructure from complicated, fragmented, and inefficent to agile, related, and trendy. In consequence, they’ll keep away from spending the money and time wanted to finish a complete system overhaul and achieve better visibility into their distribution channel information throughout their present platforms.
Let AgentSync’s ProducerSync API meet you the place you’re at
If tech complexity is obstructing key distribution channel information from flowing by way of your present methods, then your information’s not doing you a lot good. From surfacing key producer information when and the place you want it (suppose earlier than binding a coverage or paying out a fee), to extremely subtle analyses on optimize your distribution channel for max success, ProducerSync API could be the tech enhancement your corporation wants on the price and implementation timeline it desires.
Contact considered one of our specialists in the present day to learn the way your group may gain advantage from ProducerSync API.
