Meeting policyholder expectations shouldn’t feel impossible. It’s true that modern consumers expect a lot from insurance companies, but that’s because they know that modern technology makes it possible to deliver on these demands. They’re right, and not just when it comes to insurance giants. By using an ecosystem with pre-integrations, even smaller companies can provide a superior policyholder experience.
The Rise of Ecosystems
The idea of business ecosystems is fairly new, but it’s gained major traction among industry experts in recent years.
McKinsey & Company says that ecosystems are giving insurers “the opportunity to embed their insurance products into seamless customer journeys” and that “embracing ecosystems is of paramount importance to address the customer in the moment of need.” By leveraging ecosystems, insurers can improve the customer experience and create new revenue streams.
Ecosystems can also play a key role in a successful data strategy. According to Evangelos Avramakis, Head Digital Ecosystems R&D at Swiss Re Institute, “Access to the data and insights being generated by digital ecosystems will be the key to success for insurers.”
Many insurers seem to agree. According to Accenture, more than four out of five insurance executives said that ecosystems were important to their strategy, and 54% said they were actively seeking ecosystems.
The Customer’s Perspective
The average insurance customer probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about insurance ecosystems. They might not have ever even heard the term before. This doesn’t mean that ecosystems won’t impact their coverage decisions.
Ecosystems can help insurers give insurance customers many of the things they want, things like:
- Personalized insurance
- Mobile apps
- Convenient communications
- Digital payments
- Fast underwriting
- Efficient claims resolution
- Convenient communications
- Embedded insurance
Developing all of this in-house can be a resource-draining endeavor, especially for a smaller company or new startup. Even if you pull it off, by the time you’re finished, expectations will have risen again, and your competition will be far ahead of you.
Ecosystems provide a simpler solution. Instead of trying to tackle everything yourself, you partner with other organizations. This allows everyone to focus on their own specialty instead of trying to do everything at once. You spend fewer resources, and your customers get a better experience.
Size Is No Longer a Key Factor
A lot of people talk about wanting to support small businesses, but they still gravitate toward the industry giants. It’s not because they don’t want to give smaller or new businesses a chance. It’s because the larger companies have the resources needed to offer a better experience.
It’s true in retail, and it’s true in insurance – or at least, it used to be true in insurance.
According to PwC, ecosystems are changing this. Small and regional companies can leverage ecosystems to compete against larger companies and close the opportunity gap. The ecosystem model challenges the idea that companies have to be completely self-contained. Instead, ecosystems put the customers’ needs first and then use partnerships to meet those needs – and it’s something that insurers of any size can do.
The Ecosystem of Your Dreams Already Exists
Integrations can be tricky. Getting programs and services to play well together can take time, testing and resources. Even when the individual pieces are great, making them come together to form a well-functioning whole takes work.
Luckily, a lot of this work has already been done.
One of the key principles behind ecosystems is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Likewise, you don’t have to build your own ecosystem from scratch. Instead, you can join an already-existing ecosystem by using pre-integrations.
Your Village Is Waiting for You
The Insuresoft ecosystem includes more than 115 pre-built integrations. We are constantly looking for new partnerships that will help our clients meet the needs of their customers. After vetting a partner, we pre-integrate with the partner platform to foster a fast launch process. Whether you’re looking for claims support, data analytics, mobile capabilities, cloud services or so much more, we’ve already done much of the work for you, so your team can plug and play.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, these days, it takes a village to deliver a great policyholder experience. Why do everything yourself when you can access an entire ecosystem that’s ready to help you? Contact us to learn more.
