Why Should Life Insurers Simplify Their IT?
Life insurance businesses are constantly on the move to grow their revenues and meet the quickly-evolving demands of their customers. One area in which that’s sure to reflect is their tech stack or the technology they use to deliver insurance products and services. The more growth life insurance carriers accommodate, and the larger their markets, the more complex their IT systems will become.
But having complicated and labyrinthine IT systems, just for the sake of it, won’t work in the service of a life insurance company. Carriers who’ve worked with longstanding legacy systems for insurance delivery will definitely get overwhelmed by how much new tech they have to navigate. If that’s the case, the IT systems may do the exact opposite of what they’re meant to do. Instead of bolstering business activity, it could be the reason why life insurers fall behind on their business.
Life insurers should instead look for simplified, flexible, and lightweight IT solutions. The best insurance technology initiatives are concerned with the following:
- Streamlining multiple policy administration systems and letting staff work from a single source of truth, or one aggregated and consolidated system for insurance data
- Removing any unnecessary items in the IT workflow
- Decoupling redundant or convoluted processes related to insurance delivery
- Increasing satisfaction in the end-to-end insurance experience for life insurance customers
If you work in life insurance, consider advocating a simplified life insurance system for your company. Pursue a system that can help you and your staff do more while working lighter. Here’s what you can expect if you make the move to simplify your IT:
Simplifying IT Eases the Stress of Constant System Integration and Maintenance
One of the best arguments for favoring a simplified IT system is that it will greatly lessen the pains of constant system integration and maintenance. Using multiple systems for insurance processes may have seemed like the better idea in the short term. But as each system grows separate from the other, more effort will be needed to integrate and reintegrate necessary software tools and services. Multiple systems also demand twice or thrice the effort for maintenance, which will overwhelm your IT staff.
Thus, it works in your interest to pursue a simplified IT system that’s more lightweight and easier to maintain. This is the system that you’ll be delivering your life insurance products and services on. It will be a good thing for your company’s resources if this system isn’t too hard to take care of.
Simplifying IT Will Reduce the Cost of Doing Business on Multiple Systems
Another compelling argument for simplifying your IT is how much money your business can save by doing so. As of now, you may need to pay for multiple software licenses and hefty maintenance fees for multi-system insurance delivery. There’s also the issue of dealing with increased labor costs for tasks like troubleshooting.
It’s not hard to realize that paying higher fees more often will be a cash drain on your business. A simplified insurance system may cost money to acquire, but it guarantees fewer costs for doing business in the coming years.
Simplifying IT Results in Greater Efficiency in the Life Insurance Staff’s Workflow
Yet another good reason to simplify your current IT stack is the good it will do to your employees’ productivity. Your staff may be extremely burdened by the prospect of repeating the same steps in the insurance workflow over and over. Simplifying your IT will eliminate the redundant or unnecessary steps to ensure quick insurance delivery. Shifting to a consolidated insurance system may also allow you to streamline difficult tasks, such as audits for compliance reports.
Simplifying IT Will Enhance the Customer’s Overall Insurance Experience
Your employees aren’t the only people that a simplified IT system will affect. Just as important to the equation are your life insurance policyholders. Customers will be just as attuned to the inefficiencies or redundancies of multi-system insurance delivery. For example, they’ll notice that a change for one policy may not reflect on another related policy until a few days later.
In cases like these, the disjointedness in the insurance process may take a huge toll on customer satisfaction. Life insurers should instead aim for a system that requires fewer steps and more purposeful customer touchpoints, and that consolidates and streamlines customer data. The closer that customers can get to a one-touch, frictionless insurance experience, the better they’ll think of their life insurance carriers. The reward to life insurers is greater customer loyalty and higher retention rates.
Simplifying IT Will Make Life Insurers More Competitive
Lastly, a simplified IT system will grant a life insurer even more agility with their insurance data and processes. This makes them better disposed to compete with other insurers who are also likely undergoing digital transformations of their own. Your company must know when it should let go of its multi-pronged legacy system and shift to something that enhances its business strategy and competitiveness. A simplified insurance system may put you ahead of the race to become an industry leader, all with much less drag.
Conclusion
It may take a big investment on your part to rewire your old system into something more streamlined. For sure, it’s not only an issue of spending money, but also reorienting staff and customers to do things a new way. But people often warm up quickly to ideas like these if they have solid proof that it will make life simpler and easier. In this respect, your simplified IT system may actually receive a warm welcome from your fellow decision-makers, your agents, your administrators, and your customers.
