As the insurance industry starts to embrace digital transformation, insurers keep facing the same challenge of trying to meet evolving customer demands. As customers continue to raise their expectations, insurers must keep up by delivering high-quality services that emphasize convenience and security.
One of the ways that insurers can address these customer demands is by establishing an Integration-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution for insurance management. From claims processing to dispute resolution, the insurance lifecycle is a tedious operation that involves large volumes of data. Without a well-coordinated integration services solution to manage this data, insurers are more likely to experience problems such as lapses in policy execution, high premium costs, and delays in claims payments.
To illustrate further, here’s what your insurance company might miss out on if you were to skip on implementing an efficient IaaS solution:
Systematic Data Exchange Capabilities
IaaS is a model for cloud service delivery that allows real-time data exchange between enterprise IT systems, trading partners, and third-party applications. An effective cloud-based insurance management system can aggregate data from agencies, carriers, and service providers to consolidate service delivery. Insurers can also benefit from translation services that allow the conversion of data into other formats, streamlining operations and generating critical insights into customers.
Better Communication with Stakeholders
Another advantage that insurers can get with the right IaaS solution is better connectivity with other stakeholders across distribution channels. An efficient insurance management platform integrates data streams that span backend systems, operational applications, files, and other sources to deliver efficient services to customers.
Having a centralized platform for streamlining stakeholder communication is integral to automating the quote-to-issue pipeline. Optimizing the pipeline, in turn, speeds up critical processes including customer onboarding, underwriting, claims processing, and policy administration.
A Unified, Accessible, and Highly Available Platform
Hosting an insurance management platform in the cloud enables all stakeholders to eliminate data silos and to access services anytime, anywhere, and from different networks. With a cloud-based insurance management tool, stakeholders no longer have to rely on disparate connectivity services, applications, and hardware to coordinate tasks.
An efficient insurance management product must allow insurance stakeholders to access, view, and exchange data such as commission statements, case statuses, and reports in real time through an easy-to-use web portal. By having solutions like this, insurance firms can significantly decrease operational expenses, serve customers better, and reallocate time and energy from repetitive manual tasks to more value-adding pursuits like next-level customer support and product innovation.
Robust Security and Compliant Systems
A good IaaS management tool must comply with stringent security requirements to ensure the protection of company and customer data. Additionally, an insurance management solution with data encryption features should be able to protect sensitive data across the enterprise while still being able to automate tasks and ensure accuracy in data entry and re-entry.
As such, it would be good to choose an insurance management tool that complies with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and ISO 27000 information security requirements. Otherwise, if an insurer is found to be non-compliant, they are likely to face high penalties that are sure to deplete funding.
A Cost-Effective Cloud Framework
One of the benefits of the cloud service model is having the advantage of a pay-as-you-go model. Cloud-based platforms are highly scalable, which means that insurers can increase or decrease their usage of IT resources depending on the weight of customer demand. This enables insurers to optimize expenses and realign funding, something that companies can be hindered from doing when using legacy on-premises systems.
Further, since the platform is hosted in the cloud, workloads can remain largely unaffected by system downtime. Having services and applications remain available and accessible online means that an organization is sure to always achieve business continuity.
Services That Suit the Next Generation of Consumers
Appealing to the next generation of digital natives is necessary for insurance companies to survive and exceed customer expectations. To attract millennial and Gen Z consumers, insurers must be able to provide convenient digital experiences that factor in the next generation’s unique needs as well as its desire for product variety.
With a high-performing IaaS management tool, insurers can adapt to millennial and Gen Z demands for faster services, 24/7 availability, and quick rollout of new and innovative products. Moreover, insurers also need an agile and innovative insurance management solution that can operate across modular, omnichannel systems. With this, insurers can keep up with the next-generation mindset of being on the go and in the now.
Insurance Management for an Evolving World
In today’s competitive industry landscape, your insurance company must be utilizing technologies that hit the right chords in terms of interoperability, security, availability, and ease of use. That said, every insurer must know that it’s just as important to translate this level of efficiency from the front end to the back end. And by having the right IaaS tools to make it work, you can easily retain loyal customers while also getting the attention of new ones seeking a better insurance experience.
