The InsurTech sector supports the way insurance companies operate, both at the level of product creation and product distribution. Modern solutions can significantly improve operational efficiency and user experience. Choosing the right technology partner is essential for achieving success in this area. Below, we provide an overview of important criteria that are worth considering when deciding to implement InsurTech solutions in your company.
Partner experience
Let’s begin with the company. When choosing a technology partner, it is worth paying attention to its experience in the insurance industry. Partners with many years of experience in implementing InsurTech solutions may provide valuable information and best practices. It is important for the partner to understand the specific character of the insurance market and to be able to adapt their solutions to the unique needs of the company.
It is also worth paying attention to the experience of the team of the technology partner. A team with proper qualifications and experience in the insurance industry may have a significant effect on the quality of support and the effectiveness of implementations. Employees should speak the domain-specific language of the client, be up to date with the latest technological trends and regulations in order to provide better advice and to develop tailored solutions for clients. It is important to look at the partner’s key solutions, which are most often implemented in its flagship product or dedicated projects, at the right stage.
System functionality and scalability
InsureTech is a concept connected with the type of business conducted by a given enterprise. The key element here is innovation, introduction of intuitive solutions and broad analytics and automation. One of the most important criteria for choosing a partner and its solution is the range of functionalities being offered, as well as technological and business readiness to ensure continuous development.
The system should provide all basic and necessary tools for implementing the business model, such as policy and customer management, sales processes, etc. In the case of InsurTech solutions, the range of functionalities may include automation of processes associated with renewals, damages and claims, data analytics and applications based on concluded policies and integration with other systems.
Scalability is equally important – as the company develops, the system should be able to handle a growing number of customers and increasing amounts of data. Appropriate architecture of the system may facilitate this process significantly, making it possible to adjust resources to the current needs in a flexible way.
Integration with the existing IT infrastructure
Another key aspect is the ability of the system to integrate with the existing IT infrastructure. Companies often use several systems, which should work together to ensure an end-to-end flow of information.
When introducing an insurance system to an organization, we should remember that the solution should have access to all data that can be used in business processes. Data can be used to automatically determine the insurance coverage or to sell additional products. A change in the subject’s data in the central system or in the financial system may automatically necessitate issuing an annex and the customer’s updated data will certainly be used in the process of automatic renewal of policies. Therefore, it is important for the new system to have an open API and support for standard data exchange protocols, which will facilitate integration and minimize the risk of operational disruptions.
Security, regulations, technical support and availability
Data security is a priority in the financial industry, which also provides insurance involving the processing of sensitive personal data. When choosing a technology partner, it is important to make sure that the solutions on offer provide a high level of data security and are compliant with the applicable regulations, such as the GDPR. The partner should have experience in security and audits, which will help to build customer trust.
It is not only software that is responsible for data security. Hardware support, failure resistance, high system availability and an appropriate back-up plan are essential, too. For solutions offered by the future technology partner, there should be no secrets when it comes to choosing the right methods of installation, scalability of the solution and appropriate security at the hardware and software level.
Flexibility and agility
InsurTech operates in a rapidly changing environment, which requires flexibility and the ability to adapt quickly to the new market requirements. Due to the speed of the current technological development, the novelty of solutions that are innovative and cutting edge at the time of their development and implementation wears of in several months and they become generally available. The partner and its solutions should make it possible to effectively put into practice and implement new ideas in a sufficiently short time. We cannot afford not to implement a business functionality which is desirable in a given moment only because of technology-related delays. Such a situation has a direct negative effect on revenues, to the advantage of competitors.
Dynamic introduction of changes in products and services should be based on an agile production process. In this respect, we should pay attention to partners who implement projects using Agile methodology. In short, agile projects are broken into smaller, manageable sprints, e.g. 2-week ones. New functions are often introduced and their business impact is observed. In this process, it is very important to ensure feedback from users and to be able to introduce improvements in the next version of the application. Such dynamic introduction of changes, in short cycles, brings quick results, but requires both parties to have a swift decision-making path in our organization.
Summary
Choosing the right system and the right technology partner is one of the key challenges for companies that want to implement InsurTech solutions. Taking into account the above criteria – functionality, integration, security, flexibility, experience and support – InsurTech can make it much easier to take the right decision. Given the growing competition and dynamic changes in the industry, the right choice of technology and of the partner may be the key to long-term success.
Grzegorz Skulimowski
He has been in the IT industry for 20 years, also an IT specialist by education – a graduate of Computer Science at the University of Silesia. He joined the VSoft team in 2010 as a quality expert, then served as an analyst, and today he is a business solutions architect. He provides enormous support on the client-company line, specializing in the analysis and design of IT systems. He is mainly responsible for the development of the VSoft Insurance Platform.
