How insurance brokers are increasing their productivity through technology
Here are a few tools for increased productivity and efficiency in the insurance market.
The insurance industry plays an important role in the economic and social hedging of risks. Due to the divergence of global and national regulations, insurers need to evaluate their business process models to be able to react to changes effectively.
By rethinking internal structures and processes, insurance companies can optimize capital, reduce costs, and focus on customers. Efficient processes help with increased financial, risk and regulatory challenges. However, the right processes specifically can ensure consistency of programs across business functions, geographies and customer groups.
Business Process Management (BPM) uses various methods to discover, model, analyze, improve, and potentially automate business processes and procedures. Insurance companies are continuously looking for ways to increase their productivity, yet they must remain customer-centric to retain customers.
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Implementing BPM
BPM has the capability to alleviate pain points for United States-based insurance industries, leading them towards sustained innovation and optimization of processes such as claims resolution to shorten cycle times.
With the increase in optimization, comes an increase in productivity and the number of claims that can be processed, leading to a higher financial return and customer satisfaction. This is achieved as a result of BPM tying together back office and front office operations, which makes for a better customer-facing experience. When the customer is better served and the level of customer care is increased, the insurance agency can grow at a more rapid rate. Insurance offices would be well served to focus on the processes that leave the customer feeling at ease.
The easier the process, the happier the customer.
Due to the dissimilarity of national and global regulations, insurers must be able to reevaluate their business process models to have the capacity to react to changes more quickly and efficiently. The roots of BPM are based in the simplification and grounding of basic every-day functions that may at times reach complicated levels when a variety of individuals, departments, and processes are involved.
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BPM and claims
The transparency of BPM allows for all working parts of an organization to collaborate for effective claim execution. For example, agency departments can easily coordinate the state of a claim when all moving departments have access to the same platform. Accounting and checks payable can view the status of client claims sheets, approvals, and resolutions.
While agents can access the status of final steps without back-and-forth of inquiries between departments, thus creating faster work processes. When a customer can simply call any agent within an organization and receive an answer to their question, the agency is better fulfilling their promise of service to that customer. With quicker claims resolution, also comes happier clients with the potential to become life-long loyal customers.
While many insurance companies have embraced BPM for their daily and monthly processes, the few with the most competitive edge remain those that are optimizing their business processes in core functions that better serve the customer — the front facing operations. Only more recently have insurers come to realize the advantages of adopting BPM into their practices and are now implementing them at an exponential rate.
By implementing a BPM software, insurance companies are closing the gap between business goals and information systems. Implementing process management helps model and automate the business processes to create a smoother flow of data, leading to a decrease in process steps and an increase in business performance, thus enabling a stronger financial status.
The system provides stronger value as well as solutions that the agency can use to create a more engaging, personalized experience for their clients.
Related: 9 ways insurers can drive more value from technology investments
Mark Holenstein, COO of Signavio, has worked in the hi-tech sector for several years, specializing in helping organizations to optimize their customer journeys and the underlying operations that deliver them. He can be reached at mark.holenstein@signavio.com.