This publish is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
Right this moment’s insurance coverage companies depend on a median of 5.7 to 11.9 completely different know-how platforms for day-to-day operations, relying on their whole income. For giant-scale carriers managing a number of companies and their downstream producers, it’s seemingly that quantity is even greater. Whereas this stage of digital innovation represents a optimistic change within the insurance coverage business’s capability to supply trendy experiences to its customers and environment friendly workflows to its staff, cultivating a extra sturdy tech stack doesn’t come with out challenges.
Every time an insurance coverage group invests in a brand new digital answer, it’s creating higher efficiencies for no less than one piece of the insurance coverage distribution puzzle. When a enterprise begins out, it could solely have the assets to buy probably the most important know-how, like an e-mail software and a bookkeeping software program. Because the enterprise grows, it invests in additional know-how to assist handle the rise in shoppers and staff — an HR system, a buyer relationship administration (CRM) system, a compliance administration answer, and so forth.
Whereas these methods little doubt create higher efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra complicated your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it may grow to be. In reality, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and companies buy extra methods, they uncover some large 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 necessary 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 know-how for his or her core enterprise features, seamlessly linking present methods to new ones in order that they operate collectively in a significant approach isn’t precisely the norm. Older methods use completely different information codecs, protocols, and constructions than trendy 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 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. 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, information silos, a typical symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of methods, make it troublesome to leverage producer information for knowledgeable choices. Silos stop producer information from flowing seamlessly by means of your methods, creating a number of variations of reality in your data and making it troublesome to decipher the place probably the most correct data really lives.
Scalability points stop worthwhile progress
With regards to sustainable progress, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage business. For instance, nowadays, with the fitting 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 means of hours, if not days, of handbook work. Nevertheless, 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 type the spine of the insurance coverage business (severely, we’ve an entire collection about it), making compliance more and more complicated to keep up. Staying on prime of laws and avoiding penalties is especially difficult while 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 danger, information safety is a serious concern for companies with a fancy 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 had been in charge for half of the info breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage companies.
Price range predictions reveal a higher deal with lowering IT complexity
Between the pitfalls of a fancy tech stack and the ongoing market volatility and consequent funds 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 somewhat 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 higher stress on IT departments to ship sooner ROI, it’s seemingly we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, complicated technological overhauls and higher 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 hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into their present methods. With regards to their IT, these of us aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re searching for complement options that can increase their effectivity with as little enterprise interruption as doable.
The answer: Investing in APIs to cut back tech complexity and increase operational effectivity
For companies with present distribution channel administration ecosystems, software programming interfaces (APIs) supply an answer for bettering 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 probably the most full and up-to-date producer information flowing by means of your methods extra shortly and effectively than ever earlier than. Carriers and companies that put money into APIs profit from their:
Improved integration capabilities: APIs combine instantly into a corporation’s present platforms, opening the door for extra seamless information change 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 assets on information upkeep as their enterprise grows, and extra on benefiting from the tech infrastructure that drives their core enterprise processes.
Actual-time information: APIs can elevate distribution community information high quality by synchronizing a corporation’s present tech (and the info that lives inside it) with business sources of reality. Fairly than counting on handbook information validation, APIs robotically guarantee producer information is all the time 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. Consequently, they’ll keep away from spending the money and time wanted to finish a complete system overhaul and achieve higher 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 means 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 (assume earlier than binding a coverage or paying out a fee), to extremely subtle analyses on learn how to optimize your distribution channel for max success, ProducerSync API might be the tech enhancement your corporation wants on the price and implementation timeline it needs.
Contact one in all our consultants at present to learn the way your group may gain advantage from ProducerSync API.
