While insurance customers have shown their affinity for digital channels, the role of the agent and broker has not diminished. In fact, Accenture research shows that agents still control around 80% of the homeowner market and about 65% of the personal auto market. It stands to reason, then, that carriers and brokerages should be doing everything in their power to enable the peak performance of the backbone of their business. Great integration drives efficiencies and ensures agents and brokers have rapid access to accurate, reliable, and timely data. Most importantly, it frees them up to focus their efforts where they are needed – helping customers.
Over the last few years insurance agencies have been making substantial investments in their digital transformation journeys, especially when it comes to their cloud services, sales capabilities, CRM, and service automation such as bot-driven chat. This has had a meaningful impact and can be a powerful driver when it comes to operational efficiencies.
However, while the intentions behind introducing new technology are clearly good, the unintended consequences are often agents and brokers facing a steep learning curve. Not only is there the usual human resistance factor, but the time it takes to properly acclimate everyone to the new technology will delay any meaningful time to value. New systems are very rarely the silver bullet they were thought to be.
Leaders are often shocked to discover that the new technology that has been introduced to speed things up is actually slowing agents and brokers down. This results in frustration, and they will often revert to manual processes. And once this happens organizations are right back to where they were before – time consuming manual processes littered with errors and omissions.
Even with the new systems up and running, unless they are properly integrated, brokers and agents will find themselves bouncing between disparate systems to access the information they need.
The amount of time spent copying and pasting data between systems racks up quickly and in an industry like insurance, which relies heavily on huge volumes of structured and unstructured data from various applications, ensuring that all information is accurate and available across all systems is paramount.
For many insurance companies the continued high turnover rate of agents has become a very real operational risk. The latest labor numbers show US insurance carriers currently employ about 1.56 million people, down around 85,000 jobs from 2020. However, the net loss is not from layoffs, which are at their lowest in 10 years, but rather from people quitting their jobs, which are at the highest level in a decade.
Creating an enjoyable work environment without the added stress of a poorly integrated tech stack has become an operational imperative.
Add in a Great Conductor to Make Sense of the Data Cacophony
Demanding regulatory requirements, as well as customers that expect to have access to all their policy information on demand, has placed a huge strain on the insurance industry.
Ensuring that information is available, especially to agents and brokers who need to assist their clients quickly and accurately, forms the cornerstone of today’s customer experience. The solution lies in connecting all the various systems throughout the organization as well as the many third parties in the greater carrier ecosystem. This is where Data Integration Hubs (DIHs) shine.
DIHs can orchestrate multiple data sources and destinations, allowing businesses to build sophisticated and dynamic integrations. Synatic’s DIH empowers users to push and pull data between multiple solutions and across various departments, enabling agents and brokers to see and work with the data they need in multiple ways.
Because a DIH has tools necessary to automate data and bypass the need for tedious manual inputs or processes, it reduces the risk of errors. It also empowers the agents and brokers to gain a far richer understanding of clients and their insurance needs.
Making use of the right integration tool that combines ETL, integration, API management and warehousing within a single platform, allowing agents and brokers to orchestrate data and create structure out of what would otherwise be data chaos. And best of all, Synatic has in depth industry understanding and a professional services team to deliver this for you if you need.
With a better functioning stack, carriers can go a long way to reducing the administrative burden of their agents, minimizing stress, and creating a workplace that is entirely focused on delivering a better service. And, with around two-thirds of US insurance companies (61%) looking to hire new agents in the next 12 months due to an expected increase in business volume, it makes sense to ensure teams have rapid and easy access to information. To find out how you can ensure that the right data can be accessed by the right people at the right time contact Synatic today.
