This submit is a part of a sequence sponsored by AgentSync.
As we speak’s insurance coverage businesses depend on a median of 5.7 to 11.9 completely different expertise platforms for day-to-day operations, relying on their complete income. For big-scale carriers managing a number of businesses and their downstream producers, it’s possible that quantity is even greater. Whereas this degree of digital innovation represents a optimistic change within the insurance coverage business’s capability to supply trendy experiences to its shoppers and environment friendly workflows to its staff, 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 at the very least one piece of the insurance coverage distribution puzzle. When a enterprise begins out, it might solely have the sources to buy probably the most important expertise, like an electronic mail software and a bookkeeping software program. Because the enterprise grows, it invests in additional expertise 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 programs little doubt create better efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra advanced your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it might turn into. The truth is, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and businesses buy extra programs, they uncover some huge issues.
How does a fancy tech stack affect your insurance coverage enterprise?
Poor integration capabilities result in fragmented programs
The extra programs 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 firms nonetheless counting on legacy expertise for his or her core enterprise capabilities, seamlessly linking current programs to new ones in order that they operate collectively in a significant method isn’t precisely the norm. Older programs use completely different information codecs, protocols, and constructions than trendy options. These variations may cause important compatibility points that make integrations extra advanced and in the end result in system fragmentation.
Silos restrict good, data-driven enterprise selections
Your distribution channel is crammed with information on each downstream associate you’re employed with. Proactive insurance coverage organizations use this information to intelligently broaden, contract, and restructure their distribution channels in response to shifting market alternatives and challenges. In consequence, 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. Nonetheless, information silos, a typical symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of programs, make it troublesome to leverage producer information for knowledgeable selections. Silos forestall producer information from flowing seamlessly by your programs, creating a number of variations of reality in your information and making it troublesome to decipher the place probably the most correct data truly 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, lately, with the suitable distribution channel administration answer, any provider 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 handbook work. Nonetheless, not all automations are created equally and lots of legacy applied sciences lack the flexibility to scale effectively, making it simply as troublesome to develop with out additionally growing overhead prices.
Disjointed programs improve safety and compliance dangers
Complicated and ever-changing regulatory necessities type the spine of the insurance coverage business (severely, now we have a complete sequence about it), making compliance more and more advanced to keep up. Staying on prime of laws and avoiding penalties is especially difficult while you’re coping with disjointed programs 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 examine inspecting the state of cybersecurity throughout the insurance coverage sector, SecurityScorecard discovered that third-party software program and IT vulnerabilities have been accountable for half of the information breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage companies.
Finances predictions reveal a better concentrate on decreasing IT complexity
Between the pitfalls of a fancy tech stack and the ongoing market volatility and consequent finances tightening of the previous few years, it might come as a suprise that specialists predict an improve in tech spend throughout the insurance coverage business over the subsequent 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 better stress on IT departments to ship quicker ROI, it’s possible we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, advanced technological overhauls and better funding in lower-lift, modular options to assist consolidate fragmented infrastructure, scale back vendor administration complexities, simplify workflows, and unlock deeper information analytic capabilities.
The main focus shift makes much more sense when you think about the truth that many insurance coverage carriers and businesses have already invested many years of time and tens of millions of {dollars} into their current programs. In relation to their IT, these of us aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re in search of 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) provide an answer for enhancing operational effectivity with out ripping and changing present programs. Modernizing giant and sophisticated programs, like these used to handle your insurance coverage distribution channels, can take months or years. APIs scale back tech complexity and get probably the most full and up-to-date producer information flowing by your programs extra rapidly and effectively than ever earlier than. Carriers and businesses that put money into APIs profit from their:
Improved integration capabilities: APIs combine straight into a company’s current platforms, opening the door for extra seamless information trade between disparate programs and eliminating bottlenecks in every 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 current tech (and the information 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 businesses can remodel their tech infrastructure from advanced, fragmented, and inefficent to agile, linked, 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 current 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 your current programs, 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 refined analyses on the best way to optimize your distribution channel for max success, ProducerSync API will be the tech enhancement your corporation wants on the price and implementation timeline it desires.
Contact one in every of our specialists as we speak to learn how your group may gain advantage from ProducerSync API.
