How Plug-and-Play Support Can Accelerate Digital Transformation in the Insurance Industry

The insurance industry is undergoing a massive digital transformation, and companies that don’t keep up will be left behind in the next five years.

Those that remain will rely on data-driven decisions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and leverage their human capital in a way that delivers a superior customer experience, better rates, and clearer risk profiles. With a deep understanding of the power of automated processes, in the near future, insurers will use AI and machine learning (ML) to drive operational efficiencies, real-time decisioning, and profitable growth in an increasingly competitive market.

But the path through this transformation is full of challenges and you don’t have to navigate these changes alone. Instead, bring in outside experts who understand how emerging technologies can drive desired results in insurance use-cases.

This is where Apexon’s experts come in. We don’t sell insurance, but we do more than just keep up with the trends and opportunities in this sector when it comes to digitization and IT services. As expert outsiders with backgrounds in the insurance and financial services sectors, we’re well positioned to help insurance companies improve their tech stack and leverage emerging technologies to remain competitive.

Let Digital Disruption in the Insurance Space Push You into the Future

The idea of transforming your legacy code into an agile quoting engine is probably intimidating, but with the right partner, it doesn’t need to be. Moving your company into the digital future doesn’t necessarily mean swapping out your entire operational infrastructure for a cloud-based solution.

In fact, bringing in a team to assess the path toward digital transformation yields what may look like small recommendations that deliver outsized benefits. After our team assesses a company’s IT tech stack and operations, our first recommendations are often to pick the low-hanging fruit. For example, if one application is buggy and requires constant attention from one IT admin, the first move may be to replace that with a better out-of-the-box application. These “quick fixes” often yield the greatest ROI in the shortest amount of time. In the insurance industry, this may look like swapping out a home-grown, cobbled together CRM for Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.

Or, to consider an issue that’s not technical, imagine an insurer that runs several brands but struggles with client retention. Apexon’s team might come in to look at how these brands interact and share customer data within regulatory guidelines. The questions this team would address might be… 

• How do your customers navigate all these brand identities?
• How does the IT team interact with the customer data associated with each brand?
• How do you communicate your value propositions for different products to the same customer?
• If you offer product bundles, how can you reduce the likelihood that when a customer cancels their policy with one of your brands that you won’t lose their other policies?

Untangling these threads of customer data and your customers’ experiences may be more than your team is ready to take on, especially considering regulatory compliance requirements and other priorities. With outside support, however, these questions can be answered and addressed using AI solutions.

Digital Transformation in Insurance Requires the Best Data and the Right Tech Stack

If your quote engine can’t identify a returning customer or turn around a near-instantaneous quote, you’re already at a disadvantage:

• Customers who prefer to shop online will choose a different carrier that meets their digital-first expectations.
• Independent agents will quote and write policies with another carrier whose technology is easier and faster.
• Exclusive agents that are capacity-constrained may ask that consumers repeat previously-provided information and struggle to deliver quotes in a timely manner.

But that doesn’t mean that digital-first insurance upstarts have all the advantages: their first-party data typically isn’t as good, which means that they have to rely on less reliable, third-party data that they purchase at a premium.

Although some insurers struggle to get out from under the heavy burden of legacy systems that rely on outdated code, established insurance companies often have better customer data with a longer, richer history than digital disruptors that are new to the industry.

What legacy companies with better data need is not just updated software but also subject matter experts who know how to get them out from under their lines of legacy code. Apexon’s data experts, automation project managers, and software engineers can help uncouple digital pathways so that you can replace outdated code with agile software and position your company to use the data you already have to target the right risks, avoid adverse selection, and retain profitable business.

Accelerating Your Digital Transformation Can Improve Security and Governance

As the industry shifts into the cloud and data breaches monopolize headlines, one of the concerns of many insurance companies is how they will be able to govern processes happening in a digital landscape.

Again, this is where it helps to have Apexon’s team of experts, whose job is to stay current in cloud-based operations. By opting for a plug-and-play support team, you get the benefit of advice from professionals whose focus is on transformation in the insurance industry.

For example, our automation experts who are familiar with how to counter fraud with AI from work in the financial services industry can bring lessons from other verticals and advise you on what processes can be put in place to ensure best practices are followed, even without human intervention. 

Why does this matter? Today, AI is better at detecting fraudulent claims than people, and leaders in the insurance industry understand how to leverage this technology-based approach to their advantage. By training AI to study the signature markers and notify your Claims Managers, you can leverage digital resources to get out ahead of issues, reduce claim cycle times and expenses, and avoid unnecessary rate increases due to the cost of fraud. 

Transformations Require Change: It’s Time for Insurance to Go Fully Digital

The process of digital transformation will require a radical rethinking of the core components of how you do business, how you store your data, and how your teams interact with data on a daily basis. For some insurance companies, the path to digital transformation looks like starting from scratch, and Apexon’s experts can help you through that too.

Rather than accruing more technical debt by continuing to rely on legacy code or worse, trying to write your way out of it, you can invest in proven technology that drives returns – whether that’s Salesforce, customer data management, or a chatbot that provides real time customer support.

Whether you’re just starting your digital transformation process or are at an inflection point along the way, we’ll meet you wherever you are in your journey. We can help you understand and evaluate next steps and trade-offs in the path forward to drive real business results. Contact us to start the conversation today.