Increasing investment in policy management systems | Insurance Blog
Today’s cloud-based policy administration systems (PAS) are designed to enable both P&C and Life insurers to manage policies throughout their lifecycle and are the cornerstone of carriers’ digital strategies. These types of platforms are beneficial to carriers looking for ways to improve their customer relationships and develop more effective offerings, but many carriers are not utilizing the full potential of these systems.
Carriers know they need to implement digital processes to stay competitive cloud-based technology can accelerate that change. We see many of our customers using PAS platforms to take the first steps towards more successful digital operations. However, while implementation brings its own challenges, the real challenge lies in long-term sustainability and scaling the platform’s capabilities to meet larger business goals.
Advantages of PAS Platform
Carriers often use PAS platforms with the goal of modernizing their processes and being faster to market. However, many carriers do not have a continuous delivery plan to ensure that they really realize the benefits of the new platform as product and feature flexibility, personalization, standardization and price flexibility and speed with regulatory requirements.
Measuring the impact of PAS implementation
In order to achieve success with Policy Management Platforms (PAS), it is important that insurance carriers find ways to measure the impact of the platform on their business. Considering recent inflation trends, carriers must determine the speed at which they can implement changes in rates and prices using the new PAS. This metric will also show how quickly they can develop and provide new products and features to their customers. Since insurance departments often resist filing claims, the ability to quickly make changes to insurance products will be a key measure of success. Carriers should also create a continuous review loop to see how the platform performs over time. This will help them identify areas where the platform can be improved and make the necessary changes. Effective measurement should be the basis for improvement. When it comes to realizing results from the implementation of PAS, the key is to continuously review the performance of the solution and look for opportunities for improvement within the performance data. The main result that should be looked at by corporate carriers is whether they have been able to bring new things to their customers through the platform. Has the PAS solution enabled the business to effectively anticipate market needs? Are new products tested and released consistently and timely?
Data Accuracy is important
PAS platforms should help carriers measure whether their innovation is generating ROI and enable them to move quickly to iterate on products as needed. To do this, carriers need to make sure that data from the PAS platform is accurate and that data accuracy issues do not adversely affect claims or payment systems. They also need to consider whether they are making the most of the data they have. Ideally, carriers will be able to extract data and use AI and data science to analyze and generate insights that are fed back into the PAS platform so users can engage in data-driven decision making. For example, estimates should be updated as quickly as possible in production with estimate changes occurring as quickly as the pricing and actuarial teams provide feedback.
Optimizing your investment with a post-implementation health check
Setting up recurring health checks for all PAS products and their associated business lines helps carriers ensure compliance with the original usage guidelines. This health check should inform new goals going forward.
Additionally, the health check needs to cover the operating costs of customer service representatives and underwriters. The PAS platform should create more opportunities for growth while reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Carriers can measure success by measuring team productivity before the solution is introduced and comparing current performance against projections made during implementation. Finally, carriers can step back and see if the solution has helped the team develop revenue-generating products. They should consider whether product teams are using the data: determining whether rich data is readily available or if the data is still being sent to separate legacy systems. Product teams must use data to inform their brand strategies and a PAS solution must provide a holistic view of customer data across the organization. If carriers find that data optimization is still a problem, they need to prioritize encouraging adoption of data-driven processes or examine whether the platform itself creates barriers to data access.
If you’re looking for ways to get more out of your PAS investment, I’d love to connect. Feel free to reach out to me here.
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