Insurers often have to rely on point solutions, each with its own complicated technology stack, manual processes, and data availability/security concerns. This means that these service providers are unfavorably disengaged from one another and cannot automate recurring tasks, resulting in long wait times for customers.

Additionally, insurers find it difficult to scale the service process as the company grows, so they have to manually touch base with each customer or employee transaction. This is not only time-consuming but also difficult to manage as risk increases.

That’s precisely why more than 48% of the insurance executives interviewed by Deloitte’s Center for Financial Services confirm that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted their businesses, and they have no concrete action plan in place to mitigate the impact.

The following factors further compound the misery:

1. Increasing expectations of the policyholders for seamless customer service
2. The ever-growing amount of data that needs to be analyzed for claims management
3. Cyber fraud trends – particularly the emergence and evolution of identity fraud
4. Regulatory pressures to adapt to new insurance laws and maintain compliance

These factors, combined with the need to be on the differentiating bandwagon, are forcing the insurance industry to find better ways to deliver customer service while making significant changes to their enterprise-wide applications and ensuring that the security of their data is not compromised.

Enter ServiceNow Financial Service Operations (FSO). FSO has been spearheading the transformation in the insurance industry by simplifying the IT stack and delivering scalable, platform-based applications that seamlessly connect the front and back office.

This means that every single touch-point with customers is monitored and leveraged to effectively resolve cases and sustain high policyholder satisfaction. 

Let’s understand FSO’s capabilities for Insurers on a practical level:

Swift Agent On-boarding

FSO’s on-boarding capabilities enable the quick creation of policies and even speed up time to value. So, in the event of a policyholder complaint, FSO helps insurers track down whether the incident in question has already happened earlier in the customer journey. 

Likewise, in a relatively quick time, the platform helps match up policies that are in circulation with any changes that have been made to the customer accounts. Not to forget that insurance companies can also monitor the appropriate adherence to the policies. All of this is possible because FSO:

• Expedites a single platform that renders the ability to access abundant case-based knowledge and keep check of the SLAs.
• Provides utmost mobility to the insurers for selling and servicing policies to the customers.
• Identifies and reports on the various challenges that an insurance company faces at each stage by integrating data from multiple domains such as claims, disputes, etc. 

Swift Customer On-boarding

Creating a more unified on-boarding experience for customers is equally important to empower insurers to improve customer retention rates. After all, no insurer would prefer having a policyholder prospect stuck in the on-boarding maze. 

Favorably, ServiceNow dedicates a branch named Financial Services Customer Lifecycle Operations explicitly to limit the on-boarding complexity, verify the users via Know Your Customer (KYC), and centralize the information for an all-inclusive workflow.

As such, the insurers are in the position to: 

1. Simplify the on-boarding process with an automated yet personalized customer experience
2. Minimize the overall time, cost, and effort spent on on-boarding, and thus, optimize the digital journey that leads them to a successful purchase.
3. Use the data generated across each touch-point for marketing activities, cross-sells, up-sells, case management.

Improved Decision-Making

FSO has been designed to assist underwriters, claims, and support operations professionals to instantly access real-time knowledge about the policies in circulation. The platform allows insurers to customize case workflow for each policy, seamlessly execute the tasks, instantly report on the progress, and align with regulatory compliance. 

Upon completing claims or other transactions, insurers are able to generate reports that provide a consolidated overview of the entire operation – another instance of the assimilation of the front-, middle-, and back-office for unified data management and digital experience. 

The above also empowers insurers to determine the optimal level of automation required for supporting each policy, ensuring that no task remains manually intensive. Besides that, FSO ensures that policyholders can resolve fundamental issues themselves. There’s no denying that self-service functionalities abate the overall customer service delivery cost, as well as the time consumed to settle claims.

Improved Security

The previously mentioned Deloitte survey also sheds light on the fact that cybersecurity remains the number one investment priority of insurance companies in the new normal. As they continue to move to digital, insurers are focused on making their systems smarter and secure. 

FSO complements this vision by:

1. Integrating policy, claim, property, etc., transactional information with the regulations, risk control, and governance modules for sustained operations. 
2. Automating the responses to common incidents for a cohesive workflow, as well as statistical tracking and performance management.
3. Identifying the anomalies in the risk profile of a policyholder while adding a layer of security on the platform.

ServiceNow’s offerings, with regards to security, particularly cater to the customization needs of insurers — precisely why regulations like GDPR, PSD2, and CMA are profoundly adhered to. 

ServiceNow FSO for Insurers as an Industry Disruptor

Considering the rapid growth in the insurance industry in the last decade, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer scalability and the need to differentiate. However, the apt use of technology can certainly avoid any perplexity. 

Indeed, FSO proves to be an industry disruptor by providing insurers with the complete case management platform that integrates front-, middle, and back-offices, thereby accelerating decision-making and driving quality of service.