Consumer demand for a digital, connected insurance experience is on the rise. But with disparate legacy systems in place that make it difficult to share data and make informed, real-time decisions, insurance companies are finding themselves in need of new technology to streamline their customer journey.
At the heart of every step of a customer's journey is the technology that agents and brokers, claims specialists, underwriters, and other staff use to serve them. But while an insurer’s technology is highly influential in the customer experience, core modernization initiatives can be costly and consume significant resources, making them out of reach. In an effort to avoid a lengthy implementation process, insurers often suffer with disparate, disconnected systems that no longer serve their or their customers' needs.
Using low-code to bring legacy systems together.
Thankfully, there is a solution to this challenge: low-code platforms use automation to bridge the gaps between disparate legacy systems and bring people, technologies, and data together in a single workflow.
With a low-code platform, insurers can deliver a more connected insurance experience for their customers by eliminating manual, error-prone processes and offering a 360-degree customer view. Here are five ways insurers can use low-code to build a robust foundation for a connected insurance experience.
Optimize internal resources.
Through the entire insurance life cycle, insurers are responsible for meeting customer needs and delivering a positive experience. To best equip teams to do just that, it’s critical to use solutions that eliminate multiple manual touchpoints and increase collaboration between teams and departments.
Transparency among team members makes it easier for them to do their jobs with a single view of a customer’s information, claim history, and more. With the information they need at their fingertips, internal resources are set up to successfully deliver a seamless customer experience. The ability to see end-to-end customer information and share that information between teams makes collaboration easy and ensures all employees can make accurate, informed decisions.
Pro tip: Open integrations and APIs are critical to connected insurance success. When looking at digital transformation or modernization initiatives, ensure API and cloud capabilities are a key part of a tech evaluation process.
Optimize data.
As insurance companies grow, whether organically or through mergers and acquisitions, it’s easy for pertinent data to be stored across disparate, disjointed systems. For insurance companies—particularly those that have been in business for decades and serve hundreds of thousands or even millions of clients—it can be daunting to address disjointed data, and ERP implementations often aren’t an easy, quick fix.
Rather than delaying a much-needed upgrade to core systems, insurers should consider implementing technology that integrates with their existing solutions and brings critical data into a unified view. This accelerates benefit realization for multi-year transformation projects, drives innovation, and increases new technology adoption concurrently with modernization efforts for future-ready operations.
Pro tip: Instead of relying on expensive core modernization initiatives, insurers can look to new technologies like low-code to unify and extend their existing systems and accelerate their digital transformation.
Optimize regulation efforts.
Compliance guidelines and regulations are always evolving, and insurers may find it difficult to meet new measures with old technology. Connecting solutions enables insurers to rapidly adjust business processes or rules to mitigate risk and more easily report on compliance with data compiled in one, easy-to-understand view. This simplifies the audit process and offers defensible documentation on regulatory efforts and compliance for the insurer.
Pro tip: Looking ahead, insurers should anticipate more regulatory scrutiny around artificial intelligence, the “black box” behind insurers’ algorithms, ESG and climate change, cyber security, and data privacy and remain agile to stay ahead and quickly respond to changing guidelines.
Optimize the customer experience.
Insurers must find new ways to level the playing field as insurtechs and technology giants enter the market. Customers want the easiest way to manage a claim, ask a question, or purchase a policy.
Automation gives life insurance providers the time to offer greater empathy during what is often an incredibly stressful time for customers or their beneficiaries. It allows them to deliver a seamless experience with accelerated same-day payments for life claims or offer mobile applications to assist with funeral service planning or other concierge services. For property and casualty insurance providers, automation appropriately routes claims based on their level of complexity, increasing straight-through processing and expediting settlement in the event of a high first notice of loss (FNOL) period, like after a natural disaster.
Regardless of the specific insurance offered, automation helps insurers reap impactful benefits when it comes to the customer experience and improves internal efficiencies along the way.
Optimize technology.
Insurers are dependent on many technologies, including the internet of things (IoT), telematics, and insurtechs as well as legacy systems such as CRM, policy management, claims tracking, billing and accounting tools—and the list goes on.
Create a single layer of engagement with a low-code platform that drives ease of use and collaboration among team members. Optimizing technology stacks helps insurers integrate legacy and core systems with advanced third-party data sources to deliver greater value across the entire insurance value chain.
Delivering a connected insurance experience for customers.
Automation helps insurers stay agile through shifts in the market. The time saved as a result of automation frees up staff to focus on higher-impact tasks and improves efficiencies among teams, giving insurers the opportunity to focus efforts on customer satisfaction while increasing profitability. And low-code platforms make automating easy, enabling insurers to orchestrate people, technologies, and data into a single workflow to maximize resources and improve business results.
