March 25, 2021

Insurance CIOs: 5 reason why you should add self-sufficiency

When choosing technologies, we see that an essential concern for insurance CIOs is the level of independence. It is increasingly important to them to have the choice and control over implementing small changes or even launching new business lines without the vendor's involvement. They aim for flexibility, control over cost and timelines, and leveraging internal talent. We help them achieve these goals with AdInsure’s modern architecture and continuously improving tools and platform content.

Ability to customize the entire product life-cycle – configurability
Ability to implement change efficiently - AdInsure Studio
Ability to connect with ecosystems effortlessly using an integration framework and APIs
Ability to streamline the product innovation process
Ability to support flexible growth in the future and adopt new channels and customer behaviour
Your business needs dictate your independence requirements
Contact us about AdInsure software

One of the more important topics of discussion with insurance companies is the topic of choice. Insurers like to choose whether and to what degree they will involve external partners and what activities they will perform internally.

When clients ask about “independence,” they are looking to understand how independent of the vendor they will be once they choose a particular technology platform. The line of questioning usually starts with "Will we need to rely on you for every small change?" and ends up with discussions about whether "Can the claims process be easily adopted by our business analysts?"

There is no wonder why the term “independence” is so important. It provides insurers with more control over:

Release timelines
Business logic changes
Cost
Internal talent leverage
Improved overall risk management

This article lists the top 5 benefits delivered by AdInsure that allow insurers to work in their preferred manner without constraints. We know that some clients would rather rely on an external provider's services while others prefer to remain self-sufficient and stay in control of their solution. We made sure that clients who prioritize independence can stay in complete control of their decisions and operations and work how they want to.

1. Ability to customize the entire product life-cycle – configurability

One of the fundamental principles behind AdInsure was to allow clients and partners to independently design and adopt all aspects of the functionality supported by AdInsure.

We saw the future being more standardized but at the same time acknowledged that most insurers see a competitive advantage in their unique way of modelling insurance products and processes. To support them, we created a system in which all core processes can be customized to reflect a particular insurer's need.

What is configuration? Configuration is a way to adapt (customize) a technology to the needs of a business without having to compile and recompile software code. This means that the software vendor need not be involved in the process and that business users can configure individual components independently of the vendor and sometimes even internal IT.

We used configuration to implement this principle successfully. This approach allows our clients to independently design and adapt the following aspects of their business infrastructure:

Data model
Technical aspects of insurance products
Business rules
Core insurance processes
Integration interfaces (APIs)
Registries, such as customer tables
User interface

See our Architect talk about API-based insurance platform.

Along with the usual suspects, such as insurance products, insurers can also configure very specific elements such as insurance printouts, the FNOL for a particular insurance coverage (free-of-charge API is included), standard claims calculation, underwriting business rules, etc.

2. Ability to implement change efficiently - AdInsure Studio

If you want to be able to configure such a wide range of elements, you immediately deal with complexity. An important part of the AdInsure platform that hides this complexity from business users and developers are tools. Truly effective tools need to support the entire content lifecycle – from the design of new elements and testing to the distribution of new features into production and across distribution channels.

AdInsure Studio is a comprehensive tool on the mission to help business and IT teams implement changes easily and efficiently. This proven tool has received top marks from industry analysts, which motivates us to make it even better.

What are the things that drive low-code platforms and tools like AdInsure Studio? A GUI-based user interface that taps into a vast library of elements allows users to construct insurance products and processes so they can quickly bring products to the market.

The result is improved organizational agility and increased efficiency at the same time.

How to achieve it?

3. Ability to connect with ecosystems effortlessly using an integration framework and APIs

Integration capabilities are an essential part of every discussion we have with our clients, and as partnerships and ecosystems play an increasingly important role, we see the growing importance of the ability to open up the enterprise.

We made sure that every AdInsure functionality can be exposed to the outside world with the help of automatically generated APIs. And by everything, we mean everything:

Every insurance product
Every business process
Every registry
Every data source

By using the modern integration framework (including the "out-of-the-box API"), clients can digitalize their products and integrate with service and distribution partners independently – there is no need to develop any kind of custom integration interfaces on top of AdInsure business functionality. It really is out-of-the-box.

Take a look at our Sales Quote for Travel insurance API example.

4. Ability to streamline the product innovation process

Regardless of the level of customization needed to design and launch an insurance product, the process should be efficient and guided across both, business and IT organizations. And across all lines of business.

What we call wizards are essentially guided workflows for constructing products for different lines of business. Anyone familiar with the process, either a business or an IT user, will be able to participate and leverage the extensive library of existing rules, formulas, and workflows. Combined with our out-of-the-box API, this opens up tremendous opportunities for leveraging internal and external resources in your innovation process.

Serving as an important “learning tool” are the standard configuration templates (delivered as a business module supporting life and non-life insurance lines) which can be used as starting points for further adoption. They are invaluable for clients and partners.

We are talking about accelerated innovation and a streamlined process that connects business and IT teams. This may well sound like a bunch of buzzwords, but we work really hard to make it real.

Let’s look at an innovation scenario. A business comes up with an idea for a new insurance product and an innovative way to engage an audience with the product – maybe a quote app based on an age recognition machine learning API. Wizards guide a user through the product design process and APIs are immediately made for use at a hackathon-like event where external talent builds innovative case studies such as a low-code platform application and machine learning integration. The whole process from ideation to proof of concept takes weeks rather than months.

5. Ability to support flexible growth in the future and adopt new channels and customer behaviour

The ability to cover new business lines and scale with your needs is one of the most important aspects of a modern insurance platform. And to remain independent, you need to be able to respond to changes in your business without the vendor’s involvement.

Let’s look at the features you might need:

New line of business support: clients can start with one line of business or even one insurance product and grow later. For example, there is no need to involve the vendor when moving from motor casco to corporate property or even add life and accident lines of business. There are no technical constraints, it is only a matter of "downloading", customizing, and deploying new product configurations. They can even be designed from scratch.

New insurance process support: clients can start small (with Policy and Party management) and grow later, without having to worry that the whole system will break down.

The underlying structure of AdInsure can be easily used to support any process a business needs – from simple changes of information like address data and contact information to more complex procedures. One platform can be used to support all your business processes, including both current and future needs.

Like what you see?

Your business needs dictate your independence requirements

As you evaluate technology solutions to support your business, carefully consider how independent you want to be.

You don’t want to be completely at the mercy of your vendor for every tiny change. Most probably, you also do not want to control every little aspect of your business infrastructure on your own.

It’s about balancing these two opposing forces. The five areas in this post will help you frame your existing business and future needs regarding vendor independence. Look at where your business is today and where you want it to be in the future and then consider the path you want to take to get there. Ask the questions discussed above and look for solutions that can answer them all.

We designed AdInsure to provide you with the capability to navigate the rapidly changing world. Our design priorities were focused on agility and flexibility that allow our clients to stay in control while also relying on external know-how when necessary.

The choice, however, is yours.