Insurance organizations are faced with meeting the demands of an ever-changing world, with complex administrative processes and substantial workloads. Competition is fierce, and policyholders have high expectations for self-service and quick access to information. Manual processes and disjointed workflows can lead to inefficiency and frustration for both agents and insureds.
With a modern insurance policy administration system, you can differentiate your organization from the competition, improve employee and customer satisfaction, and create significant operational savings. The right technology can improve productivity, enhance employee skill sets, and provide more value to insureds, all of which can lead to a strong return on investment.
Selecting a policy administration system is an important decision with many factors to consider. When evaluating policy admin software, keep these capabilities in mind:
- Manage the entire lifecycle of a policy. The ideal insurance policy administration system should be a one-stop shop for your book of business. Your users should never have to leave the system to complete tasks for rating and allocation, certificates, quotes, invoices, reporting, renewals, diaries, or endorsements. Having access to this information in a central system can dramatically improve efficiency and provide a better experience for your agents and insureds.
- Streamline workflows with automation. A single insurance policy can generate a significant amount of documentation and labor-intensive tasks. With ever-increasing volumes of policies to manage, even the most experienced agents can benefit from automating workflows. Automation can be especially beneficial for generating renewals, issuing new policies, providing quotes, making changes to existing policies, and minimizing data entry. By automating more routine elements of the policy administration process, agents can focus more on providing personalized service to insureds.
- Provide self-service options for insureds. Insureds need and expect instant access to their policy information, and they often have to request these details from their agents. These requests create more work for agents who are already extremely busy, and they can inconvenience policyholders who need answers quickly. By choosing insurance policy administration software with self-service capabilities, you can improve satisfaction for your insureds and agents alike. With self-service, insureds can view proposal and policy history, pull reports and certificates, and have access to other authorized information. Because today’s insureds value immediate access to their information, self-service capabilities can help you achieve better customer satisfaction and business retention.
- Improve pricing and cost accuracy with analytics. By implementing the right insurance policy administration system, you can create significant operational savings with improved analysis of premium, risk, and deductible factors. With embedded analytics, you can make informed decisions based on real-time data. Look for a solution that offers Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), standard reports, and user-friendly ad-hoc reporting.
- Integrate with other systems easily. Depending on the nature of your business, you may need your policy admin system to integrate with your claims admin software, billing system, risk management information system, and more. You likely have other internal systems that are essential to your day-to-day operations. By selecting an insurance policy solution that easily integrates with other systems, you can ensure seamless workflows and gain a more holistic view of your data.
- Easy to use and customize. Insurance policy administration is highly complex, and every organization has different processes. The ideal policy admin system should be designed with agents in mind, with an intuitive interface that can easily adapt to user needs. Choose a system that is simple to use and allows you to configure workflows based on your specific requirements.
- Ensure data security and integrity. Insurance organizations manage a significant volume of sensitive data and personally identifiable information. When choosing a software provider, be sure they have the necessary security measures in place to protect your data. It’s important to consider whether your software provider hosts in a public or private cloud. A private cloud can provide an additional level of security and more personalized service.
- Have access to training and educational resources. When you’re getting up and running with a new software program, having proper training can set you up for success. The right provider will tailor training sessions to your particular policy admin needs and objectives. Once you get comfortable using the system, you may want more advanced tips and best practices. Your software provider should have educational resources readily available for you at every stage of your journey.
- Receive exceptional customer support. Choosing new insurance policy management software is a big decision, and a major factor to consider is the quality of customer support. Look for a provider that is committed to customer success and takes the time to understand your unique requirements and goals. Ideally, you should have a single support person who can be your advocate and point of contact.
A policy administration system can help insurance organizations meet key business objectives while improving satisfaction for agents and policyholders. To take a deeper dive into these outcomes, check out our ebook, Setting the Standard for Modern Policy Administration Systems.
Next Steps
If you would like to find out more information on this topic please contact our Policy Product Manager Morgan Barlet.
