Achieving operational excellence is imperative for the insurance industry. Currently, 25% of every premium dollar is consumed by operating expenses, a figure that hasn’t changed in more than a decade, according to KPMG. While nearly all insurers (94%) report actively working to lower this figure, nearly half (55%) say they are struggling to do so, according to a 2019 KPMG/ACORD survey.
While lowering operating expenses is important, it is just one part of achieving holistic operational excellence. Insurers are also facing pressure from new government regulations designed to increase reporting transparency. These new reporting standards must be met quickly without compromising other innovation initiatives. Recent global economic uncertainty has further underscored the need for swift operational transformation and the creation of an intelligent enterprise – time is of the essence.
Unlocking Productivity and Accelerating Innovation
True change occurs when insurance companies become partners in their customers’ lives. To achieve this, insurers must reimagine operational excellence with new business models that not only lower costs but accelerate innovation cycles and unlock productivity. These include automated, streamlined, and integrated processes that employees can access from anywhere.
Benefits of Operational Excellence Solutions
The right operational excellence solutions will help your organization sell the right insurance products faster to the right customers while providing a consistent, loyalty-building service experience in a multichannel environment. Key benefits of installing operational excellence solutions include:
- Serving customers better by anticipating needs and delivering the right service at the right moment
- Unlocking business value from the explosion of data available through advanced digital technology
- Streamlining processes, including quoting, offering, and application management
How the SAP Cloud for Insurance Solution Will Transform Your Operations
SAP Cloud for Insurance helps organizations reimagine key areas of their business to achieve a higher level of operational efficiency. Leaders are empowered to deploy digital processes that improve both the employee and customer experiences. SAP’s industry cloud makes it easier to deploy specialized applications that address specific insurance industry needs.
With end-to-end solutions, your organization can choose to flexibly purchase and deploy different solutions as needed. No matter which you choose, all your solutions will fully integrate. These solutions also can harness the power of next-generation technologies, like machine learning, robotic process automation (RBA), and insurtech integration.
Operational excellence solutions from SAP can help your organization:
- Accelerate quoting, offering, and application management while driving efficient underwriting.
- Streamline the development of products and policies by capturing and analyzing experience and operational data for real-time insights and actively designing experiences that customers desire.
- Optimize the claims lifecycle by capturing claim data through subrogation and recovery, managing disbursements, automatically detecting fraud, and continuously evaluating claims performance.
- Manage the reinsurance lifecycle with a full view of operations and customers, which can help accelerate period close cycles by up to 300% and improve data quality.
- Quickly process billing and payments by increasing the efficiency and accuracy of billing and settlement processes using a single, integrated, and automated operational subledger.
Reimagine what’s possible for your insurance organization. Download the solution brief “Operationalize Excellence Across Your Insurance Business.”
This article was written by Joseph Pacor and first appeared on the SAP Global News Center.
