In today’s dynamic and complex business environment, a shift is being seen within the insurance industry. This is due to ever-changing regulations and market drivers. The hyper competitive nature of the insurance business has given rise to different operational challenges on how to improve turnover ratios as well as establish reasonable pricing models. In the past 10 years alone, insurance businesses have realized the importance of having flexible and dedicated outsourcing models. With the readily available advantages that business process outsourcing (BPO) companies provide, insurance companies have been able to reduce operation expenditures, focus on business growth and have a lean back-office staff. By choosing to outsource, insurance companies can effectively perform essential day-to-day functions and are driven towards profitability and growth.
Some of the benefits are:
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into this.
For Insurance companies that are gearing for growth and profitability, outsourcing business processes is a strategic option. Outsourcing helps in reducing operational costs, overcome economic uncertainties and provides a strong foundation for expansion and growth. Insurance companies can maximize outsourcing capabilities in various areas of their operations. Common areas for outsourcing are claims handling and underwriting to several systems. Good outsourcing models should include standardized, documented business processes, a rationalized delivery model and an exceptional customer retention plan in place.
There is already a large number of businesses who have benefited from outsourcing. These businesses were able to completely transform their business operations while offering top-notch services to their customers. Historically, the financial industry was first to leverage outsourcing and now, insurance companies have started to investigate the possibility of outsourcing various business processes.
Companies usually face challenges finding the right staff, business process outsourcing is a direct response to this challenge. For insurance companies that already have employees that are skilled and experienced, outsourcing can augment productivity and profitability by transferring routine tasks. This allows these employees to focus more on expertise and deliver high value output instead.
This is one of the critical day-to-day functions that insurance companies outsource. As insurance companies grew, so did the demand for data processing. This led insurance companies to purchase additional computers and other related technology equipment leading to higher operational and administrative costs.
This is where insurance outsourcing came to play. Business process outsourcing companies give insurance companies the benefit of reducing costs, accurate data and an enhanced operational efficiency.
Data mining helps insurance companies by finding useful customer patterns. Data mining produces great results and helps in critical decision making. The traditional way of handling large amounts of transactional had proved to be complex and takes a lot of time.
By outsourcing data mining insurance companies can quickly identify risk factors that can give an insight on profit, losses and claims. This data also provides customer level, sales and marketing analysis, insights on product development, provides a way to estimate outstanding claims provision and can predict fraudulent claims.
Utilizing state of the art technology can help insurance staff respond to customer’s needs while providing crucial information about almost any concern they have about insurance. IT outsourcing helps insurance companies reduce the amount of paperwork in dealing with proposals and policies. This can be done through various web or mobile applications that automate most of the processes and tasks. With outsourced IT services, insurance companies are able to meet customer needs in less time and can remove the need for handling and travel costs.
IT Outsourcing allows insurance companies to generate more insurance proposals, policies and process more applications hence, creating different sales funnels and adding convenience for customers.
A best-in-class call center outsourcing should help insurance companies meet regulatory requirements, retain customers, maintain customer loyalty and be able to enter new markets. Insurance companies can take advantage of call center services to help manage customer inquiries and issues primarily via phone. Other channels of communication include email and chat. A single customer service representative (CSR) can be tasked to follow up on an entire process and see through it until the end.
Not only that, but call centers are also helpful in boosting trust of the insurance company’s customer when a claim is being filed by providing emotional and professional support.
Insurance underwriters evaluate insurance proposals with the goal of determining feasibility and finding out potential risk that are involved. This enables insurance companies to gain competitive advantage through process excellence that includes catastrophe modeling, renewals and underwriting support.
Insurance outsourcing companies can provide a full spectrum of underwriting services which can range from business process management to analytics. Other services may include submission and clearance in which application processing eligibility checks, liability coverage, data cleaning and account verification is done.
Insurance companies manage risks of their customers in exchange for a premium. Historical data is gathered from similar policies is used to determine the premium for each policy. This premium is then paid in advance of the service delivery. With the insurance company’s customers growing, so are the financial transactions. The insurance industry has a fiduciary responsibility to the general public, special rules in accounting practices have certainly evolved.
Insurance companies can work with outsourced finance and accounting service providers to design, transform and run finance, billing and accounting related tasks to improve cash flow and maintain top customer satisfaction ratings.
If your company is considering outsourcing, look no further than the expert team at Staff Boom. Our outsourcing specialists can schedule a meeting with you to discuss your company needs, goals and current state. Contact Staff Boom today!
