This publish is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
Immediately’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 complete income. For giant-scale carriers managing a number of businesses and their downstream producers, it’s probably that quantity is even increased. Whereas this stage of digital innovation represents a constructive change within the insurance coverage business’s capacity to supply trendy experiences to its customers 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 resolution, it’s creating higher efficiencies for a minimum of 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 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 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 higher efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra advanced your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it will probably turn into. In actual fact, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and businesses buy extra methods, they uncover some large issues.
How does a fancy tech stack impression 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 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 may cause vital 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 full of information on each downstream accomplice 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. Because of this, data-driven companies are 23 instances extra prone to purchase new clients and 19 instances extra prone to obtain above-average profitability than their much less data-driven counterparts. Nevertheless, information silos, a standard symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of methods, make it tough to leverage producer information for knowledgeable selections. Silos stop producer information from flowing seamlessly by way of your methods, creating a number of variations of reality in your data and making it tough to decipher the place probably the most correct info really lives.
Scalability points stop worthwhile progress
Relating to sustainable progress, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage business. For instance, nowadays, with the best distribution channel administration resolution, 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 way of hours, if not days, of guide work. Nevertheless, not all automations are created equally and plenty of legacy applied sciences lack the power to scale effectively, making it simply as tough to develop with out additionally growing overhead prices.
Disjointed methods enhance safety and compliance dangers
Advanced and ever-changing regulatory necessities kind the spine of the insurance coverage business (significantly, we’ve an entire collection about it), making compliance more and more advanced to keep up. Staying on prime of laws 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 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 responsible for half of the information breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage corporations.
Finances predictions reveal a higher concentrate on lowering 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 specialists predict an enhance in tech spend throughout the insurance coverage business over the subsequent yr. However, digging a little bit 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 strain on IT departments to ship quicker ROI, it’s probably we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, advanced technological overhauls and higher 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 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 tens of millions of {dollars} into their present methods. Relating to their IT, these of us aren’t seeking to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re on the lookout for complement options that can increase their effectivity with as little enterprise interruption as doable.
The answer: Investing in APIs to scale back tech complexity and increase operational effectivity
For companies with present distribution channel administration ecosystems, utility 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 scale back tech complexity and get probably 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 businesses that spend money on APIs profit from their:
Improved integration capabilities: APIs combine straight into a corporation’s present platforms, opening the door for extra seamless information trade between disparate methods and eliminating bottlenecks in day by 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 profiting 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 information that lives inside it) with business sources of reality. Reasonably than counting on guide information validation, APIs routinely guarantee producer information is at all times 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. Because of this, they’ll keep away from spending the money and time wanted to finish a complete system overhaul and acquire 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 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 tips on how to optimize your distribution channel for max success, ProducerSync API will be the tech enhancement your online business wants on the price and implementation timeline it desires.
Contact one among our specialists in the present day to learn the way your group may benefit from ProducerSync API.
