The insurance industry recently entered a major transformation stage as a slew of key trends have converged, such as:
- Sales channel diversification has led to a growing share of direct to consumer relative to traditional commission based models.
- IoT provides information not previously available to provide insight into claims risk due to policyholder behavior.
- AI and automation provide the ability to decrease operating costs and provide better experiences due to shortened cycle times. Along with this is a move from paper to digital quoting and application processes.
Many of the insurance industry changes have resulted in underwriting updates to ensure new data points and pricing logic can be leveraged to improve outcomes. Combining engagement and transactional capabilities on one platform is crucial to reducing time to value and maintaining strategic agility. There is no better platform than Salesforce to achieve these goals.
With the addition of Salesforce Industries (formerly Vlocity), Salesforce improves its best-in-class engagement technologies with core underwriting capabilities, including: a rules engine based off of the insurance product catalog, the underwriter workbench tool, and guided process flows. All of which combine to enhance user experience and increase the speed of common transactions.
Configurable Capabilities
All of these features are configurable, allowing end users to get the most value out of their solutions. In many cases, baseline industry standard processes and workflows can be downloaded from the Salesforce Process Library to speed up implementation times.
While these capabilities can drastically improve the value provided by the underwriting department, the best client outcomes are achieved by streamlining the entire sales process, including underwriting.
For insurers who have technology solutions that provide some, but not all, of the capabilities listed, the architecture can be modified to leverage your existing investments. The Salesforce Industries products make this easy, and often achievable via configuration.
Product Catalog
Leverage the product catalog and guided process flow in quote and application capture to drastically reduce Not in Good Order (NIGO) quotes or applications by ensuring all required data and associated forms are captured prior to underwriting.
Automated Underwriting
Introduce automated underwriting for the most manual underwriting requirements and prioritize the highest value rules. Automation rules should be curated and extended past the initial implementation. Consider product segmentation and leveraging “shelf-rated” product pricing based on risk.
Underwriting Follow-up
Automatically trigger proactive followup notifications tied to product rules and make use of the contact’s engagement preferences to communicate through the channel of their choosing. This can be extended to more complex series of interactions usually associated with marketing campaigns like a welcome or renewal campaign.
Group Policy Features
Set up the group policies features seamlessly in the enrollment system. This provides a consistent look and feel to the brokers or individuals that are applying.
Broker Portal
Aggregate underwriting notifications and updates along with other broker functions, like book of business and licensing and appointment functions, in a consolidated broker portal.
Pricing and Risk Visibility
For renewals, use current policy cost in next term’s pricing and adjust product cross and upsell recommendations. This can be automated during the quoting process and refined during underwriting. Leverage captured data, including those from IoT or other third-party sources, to decrease cohort size to more precisely align risk and price.
Reaping the benefits of a Salesforce underwriting solution
Insurers who embrace these tactics in providing tools for their underwriting teams will realize:
- Lower operational costs and better applicant/broker experiences resulting in increased market share.
- Shorter duration from quote to policy due to removal of paper and automation
- Decreased operational cost due to digitization and automation
- Reduced business risk from resource scarcity
If your organization is looking to implement a new underwriting solution or looking to revitalize a prior Salesforce implementation, Silverline is happy to discuss how to maximize the value from your next project.
Insurance Industry in the New Decade: Challenging Expectations and Transforming Experiences
Customer expectations for insurers are higher than ever, as the insurance experience is being compared with online ordering and service transactions in other industries. As this and other trends converge, the impetus for digital transformation has never been higher. Grab this ebook to learn more about the major trends facing insurers, as well as how take advantage of technology to find success.
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