What are the Upcoming Outsourcing Trends in Insurance Industry?
Outsourcing is a buzz word in the insurance sector today. Insurance companies are slowly realizing that if they have to retain the competitive edge and survive the cutthroat business environment, outsourcing of non core activities is the only option. But there are certain inherent issues in insurance process outsourcing that is unique to this sector and quite different from IT, ITES or other BPO services. For example, data processing and a need for stringent security cover are crucial. Policy claims and commission management outsourcing means the large scale transfer of personal data of both the employees and clients. Thus the insurance process outsourcing company has to ensure a high level of data protection.
Taking all these factors into account and in keeping with the times, a few trends have emerged which can be said to be the forerunner of the shape of things to come in insurance process outsourcing.
Focus on Innovation – With technological innovations taking root in nearly all business scenarios, buyers are now increasingly insisting that outsourcing companies push for modernization that will streamline outsourced areas. In fact, the trend is in incorporating innovation based incentives in contracts and regular meetings between the partners to discuss what can be further done to optimally restructure the outsourced work.
Flexible Location options – The focus is splitting up the outsourced work in different locations. Insurance process outsourcing companies are now offering a wider choice to their clients in a bid to rationalize the process and get the best out of all. It depends largely on the cost of running individual processes and the alternatives can be on-site or off-site, in the same city or in another where there will be added tax incentives to set up business. The goal is to optimize the outsourced process both in terms of costs and efficiency.
Using RPA software – From manual to computerization to use of robotic process automation (RPA) software, it has been a long journey for insurance process outsourcing companies. These are smart platforms that can be safely used for recurring tasks and those that do not need constant monitoring or tracking. By entrusting tedious and repetitive tasks to this RPA software, a lot of work pressure is taken off the service providers. Further, it can be safely assumed that in the very near future this platform will help to reduce staff at BPOs thereby saving on establishment expenses.
Beefing up Security – More stress will be laid on this aspect than any other if the future trend in outsourcing is to be evaluated. With large scale hacking of data even from the supposedly highly secure organizations like Sony Pictures and JP Morgan, stringent security measures will be put in place by insurance process outsourcing companies more so as huge caches of high security data has to be handled.
It is thus seen that the future trends in outsourcing can be broadly classified into three segments– incorporating innovative processes to rationalize outsourced work, cost cutting measures with flexible locations and advanced software and strengthening data security systems.
