How integration can make or break your insurance business

In an industry as old as insurance, bad habits keep productivity low. According to business consultancy Maui Mastermind, the average business owner spends 21.8 hours a week on administrative tasks like copying and pasting data between systems. In our industry, premiums are informed by troves of data and everything needs to be tracked, reported, and auditable. For insurance that number is likely much higher. Fortunately there’s a one word solution for this systemic problem: Integration.

Insurance Has A Communication Problem

In efforts to digitize the manual processes, many insurers have adopted new software. But insurance data is high in volume and variety. Everything from application data to claims and accounting info has to be managed. This means investing in several different systems to manage different types of data efficiently.

Management of all of those databases can get as confusing and tedious as managing the data itself. If these systems don’t talk to each other, you’re in for a world of hurt as your organization grows. With the swift rise of Insuretech, we’re at an inflection point in the industry where this kind of problem has become the norm. Insurers are burdened with several systems to update and manage, usually manually.

The One-Word Answer

Back to our one-word answer: integration. Integration really just means systems talking to each other. Software systems must be integrated to efficiently share records and update in real time. This means only entering data once, happier employees, scalable operations, or doing more business in way less time.

There are several key areas where integration has a huge impact:

1. Application

Selling a property risk? Underwriters are often checking third party databases for hazard information and to verify data. How about trucking? Better check those VINs to ensure the vehicle make and models match official records. Virtually every line of business requires or benefits from third party data sources during the application and underwriting stages. But accessing data from these external sources is manual and time-consuming work.Integrations make this inefficient process completely automatic. Systems like Surefyre pull data from external or internal sources when and where it’s needed. This means streamlined submissions and a better user experience for agents and underwriters.

2. Quoting

One of the most glaring and urgent needs for systems integration is between applications and raters. Connecting application data to in-house or external rate generation solutions is key to efficiently and accurately pricing risks. The inevitability of human error in data entry can lead to incorrectly pricing premiums, severely impacting profits at scale. More commonly, the inefficiency of copying and pasting data into raters will stifle an insurers growth potential.

3. Policy Issuance

Automated software integration is especially helpful for policy issuance since the process usually involves a ton of data and complex logic to determine what forms should be included. Integrating with backend systems automates tedious manual tasks like assigning policy numbers, compiling forms for each customer, and manually sending files to agents.

Final Thoughts: Software Integration for Insurers

If easier submissions, faster quotes, and more sales interest you at all then integration should be core consideration in your IT strategy. As one of our primary value adds, Surefyre seamlessly connects fragmented tech across any insurer’s software systems. Get in touch to learn more.

For more information on insurance software integrations, check out www.surefyre.co.