This submit is a part of a sequence sponsored by AgentSync.
In the present day’s insurance coverage businesses depend on an average of 5.7 to 11.9 different technology platforms for day-to-day operations, relying on their whole income. For big-scale carriers managing a number of businesses and their downstream producers, it’s doubtless that quantity is even greater. Whereas this degree of digital innovation represents a optimistic change within the insurance coverage trade’s capability to supply trendy experiences to its customers and environment friendly workflows to its workers, 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 larger efficiencies for a minimum of one piece of the insurance coverage distribution puzzle. When a enterprise begins out, it might solely have the sources to buy essentially the most important expertise, like an e-mail software 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 techniques little doubt create larger efficiencies for the enterprise, there’s no denying the irony that the extra advanced your tech stack will get, the extra inefficient it could possibly develop into. Actually, it’s not unusual that, as carriers and businesses buy extra techniques, they uncover some massive issues.
How does a fancy tech stack affect your insurance coverage enterprise?
Poor integration capabilities result in fragmented techniques
The extra techniques 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 percent of insurance companies still relying on legacy technology for their core business functions, seamlessly linking present techniques to new ones in order that they perform collectively in a significant means isn’t precisely the norm. Older techniques use totally different knowledge codecs, protocols, and constructions than trendy options. These variations may cause vital compatibility points that make integrations extra advanced and finally result in system fragmentation.
Silos restrict sensible, data-driven enterprise selections
Your distribution channel is stuffed with knowledge on each downstream accomplice you’re employed with. Proactive insurance coverage organizations use this knowledge to intelligently develop, contract, and restructure their distribution channels in response to shifting market alternatives and challenges. In consequence, data-driven businesses are 23 times more likely to acquire new customers and 19 times more likely to achieve above-average profitability than their much less data-driven counterparts. Nonetheless, data silos, a standard symptom of lackluster integrations between a number of techniques, make it tough to leverage producer knowledge for knowledgeable selections. Silos stop producer knowledge from flowing seamlessly by way of your techniques, creating a number of variations of fact in your information and making it tough to decipher the place essentially the most correct info truly lives.
Scalability points stop worthwhile progress
In relation to sustainable progress, automated options have been an actual game-changer for the insurance coverage trade. For instance, today, with the correct distribution channel management solution, any provider 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 manual work. Nonetheless, not all automations are created equally and plenty of legacy applied sciences lack the flexibility to scale efficiently, making it simply as tough to develop with out additionally growing overhead prices.
Disjointed techniques enhance safety and compliance dangers
Complicated and ever-changing regulatory necessities kind the spine of the insurance coverage trade (seriously, we have a whole series about it), making compliance more and more advanced to keep up. Staying on prime of rules and avoiding penalties is especially difficult once you’re coping with disjointed techniques which can be unable to replace in real-time, creating inconsistencies in your distribution community knowledge. On prime of compliance threat, knowledge safety is a significant concern for companies with a fancy tech infrastructure. In a study examining the state of cybersecurity across the insurance sector, SecurityScorecard discovered that third-party software program and IT vulnerabilities have been in charge for half of the information breaches reported by 150 prime insurance coverage companies.
Funds predictions reveal a larger give attention to decreasing IT complexity
Between the pitfalls of a fancy tech stack and the ongoing market volatility and consequent budget tightening of the previous few years, it might come as a suprise that experts predict an increase in tech spend across the insurance industry over the next year. 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 players like GEICO, and greater pressure on IT departments to deliver faster ROI, it’s doubtless we’ll see much less prioritization on multi-year, advanced technological overhauls and larger funding in lower-lift, modular options to assist consolidate fragmented infrastructure, scale back vendor administration complexities, simplify workflows, and unlock deeper knowledge 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 thousands and thousands of {dollars} into their present techniques. 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 present distribution channel administration ecosystems, application programming interfaces (APIs) supply an answer for bettering operational effectivity with out ripping and changing present techniques. Modernizing massive and sophisticated techniques, like these used to handle your insurance coverage distribution channels, can take months or years. APIs scale back tech complexity and get essentially the most full and up-to-date producer knowledge flowing by way of your techniques extra rapidly and effectively than ever earlier than. Carriers and businesses 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 knowledge trade between disparate techniques and eliminating bottlenecks in every day workflows.
Seamless, safe scalability: By leveraging APIs that derive knowledge from trade sources of fact, companies can focus much less of their time and sources on knowledge upkeep as their enterprise grows, and extra on profiting from the tech infrastructure that drives their core enterprise processes.
Actual-time knowledge: APIs can elevate distribution community knowledge high quality by synchronizing a corporation’s present tech (and the information that lives inside it) with trade sources of fact. Reasonably than counting on guide knowledge validation, APIs robotically guarantee producer knowledge 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, related, and trendy. In consequence, they’ll keep away from spending the money and time wanted to finish a complete system overhaul and achieve larger visibility into their distribution channel knowledge throughout their present platforms.
Let AgentSync’s ProducerSync API meet you the place you’re at
If tech complexity is obstructing key distribution channel knowledge from flowing by way of your present techniques, then your knowledge’s not doing you a lot good. From surfacing key producer knowledge when and the place you want it (assume earlier than binding a coverage or paying out a fee), to extremely subtle analyses on methods to optimize your distribution channel for max success, ProducerSync API may be the tech enhancement your corporation wants on the price and implementation timeline it needs.
Contact one of our experts today to learn the way your group may benefit from ProducerSync API.