Platform? We Don’t Need Your Stinking Platform…

Here’s a fun way to place the broadening P&C talent gap in some context:

1.)  Do you work at a P&C Insurance Carrier?

2.)  Is the inability to find exceptional good sufficient talent materially impacting your business?

If #1 is “Yes”, then we both know the second answer.  The stats aren’t difficult to find:

• Average age in the P&C industry is 56
• 400,000 P&C jobs to fill by 2020
• 25% of current insurance professionals to retire by 2018
• And so on…

An Increasingly Common Answer

Not surprisingly, the insurance business process outsourcing market continues to expand at YOY double-digit growth.  Accelerating this trend is a broader understanding of the boardroom that “outsourcing” doesn’t mean “offshore sweatshop”.  These days, the business case isn’t even necessarily a cost play.  Today’s business process outsourcing market enables P&C carriers to quickly enhance capabilities, broaden distribution, tap into innovation, and often times deliver a customer experience superior to the one those resistant to change aim to protect.  It can be supplementary; not necessarily job-replacing.

Nonetheless, P&C carriers remain challenged:  most P&C business processing outsourcing vendors mandate the usage of their policy administration and/or claims platform for the delivery of operational services.  But what about the carriers that just completed (sort of) a multi-year, multi-million, multi-CIO implementation or modernization project?  What about the carriers that’ve concluded that simply re-facing their legacy system with customer engagement & workflow enhancements likely yields a commensurate ROI a heckuva lot faster?  Or in short:  what about the carriers that don’t need a new platform?  

Beyond technology constraints, many companies simply don’t need full-blown outsourcing.  Often times more targeted or “surgical” support would help a carrier achieve operational, production growth, or retention objectives:

Policy Administration & Customer Service:  Overflow Capacity, Extended Hours

• Alleviate Operational Constraints; Provide “When-I-Need-You” Service

Underwriting: Low-Level Underwriting Support, Inspection Reviews, Renewal Re-underwriting

• Free up precious Underwriting Talent to focus on more valuable risk review & selection

Claims: Outbound Claim Status Updates

• Customer experience, and thereby retention, is materially improved when the insured feels informed

Sales: Outbound sales support to follow-up on prospects (for Agent Partners or Direct Carriers)

• Expand distribution reach (particularly effective 5 – 7:30 PM local time)

The (Very) Short List

While a shorter list, P&C operational support companies that deliver services on their clients’ platforms actually do exist.  The list shrinks if criteria include “U.S. Based”, shrinks further at “A-la-Carte / Targeted Services”, and even further yet at “Licensed Producers to Support Distribution”.  OK; too obvious?  If you’d like to know how we help P&C companies “plug the gap”, drop us a line at info@cxis.com or check us out at www.cxis.com.