This put up is a part of a collection sponsored by AgentSync.
Immediately’s insurance coverage businesses depend on a mean of 5.7 to 11.9 completely different know-how 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 possible that quantity is even increased. Whereas this degree of digital innovation represents a constructive change within the insurance coverage business’s skill to supply fashionable experiences to its shoppers 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 resolution, it’s creating higher 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 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 resolution, 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 will probably develop into. The truth is, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and businesses 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 % of insurance coverage corporations nonetheless counting on legacy know-how for his or her core enterprise capabilities, seamlessly linking present methods to new ones in order that they operate collectively in a significant means isn’t precisely the norm. Older methods use completely different information codecs, protocols, and buildings than fashionable options. These variations may cause important compatibility points that make integrations extra complicated and finally result in system fragmentation.
Silos restrict good, data-driven enterprise selections
Your distribution channel is full of information on each downstream associate you’re employed with. Proactive insurance coverage organizations use this information to intelligently increase, contract, and restructure their distribution channels in response to shifting market alternatives and challenges. Because of this, data-driven companies are 23 occasions extra prone to purchase new prospects and 19 occasions extra prone 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 tough to leverage producer information for knowledgeable selections. Silos forestall producer information from flowing seamlessly by 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 forestall worthwhile development
In terms of sustainable development, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage business. For instance, today, 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 hours, if not days, of handbook work. Nonetheless, not all automations are created equally and plenty of legacy applied sciences lack the flexibility to scale effectively, making it simply as tough to develop with out additionally rising overhead prices.
Disjointed methods improve safety and compliance dangers
Complicated and ever-changing regulatory necessities kind the spine of the insurance coverage business (significantly, we’ve got an entire collection about it), making compliance more and more complicated to take care of. Staying on prime of rules and avoiding penalties is especially difficult while you’re coping with disjointed methods which are 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 analyzing the state of cybersecurity throughout the insurance coverage sector, SecurityScorecard discovered that third-party software program and IT vulnerabilities had been guilty for half of the info breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage corporations.
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 finances tightening of the previous few years, it could come as a suprise that consultants predict an improve 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 strain on IT departments to ship quicker ROI, it’s possible 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, 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. In terms of their IT, these people aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel a lot as they’re in search of complement options that can enhance their effectivity with as little enterprise interruption as potential.
The answer: Investing in APIs to cut back tech complexity and enhance operational effectivity
For companies with present distribution channel administration ecosystems, software programming interfaces (APIs) provide an answer for bettering operational effectivity with out ripping and changing present methods. Modernizing massive and complicated 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 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 company’s present platforms, opening the door for extra seamless information alternate between disparate methods 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 present tech (and the info that lives inside it) with business sources of reality. Reasonably than counting on handbook 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 rework their tech infrastructure from complicated, fragmented, and inefficent to agile, linked, and fashionable. Because of this, 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 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 how one can optimize your distribution channel for optimum success, ProducerSync API could be the tech enhancement your enterprise wants on the price and implementation timeline it needs.
Contact one in every of our consultants in the present day to learn how your group may benefit from ProducerSync API.