Discover the Benefits of a Modern Policy Administration System

Insurance companies that are focused on growth and agility are seeking modern policy administration systems to help them drive innovation, build stronger partnerships and build a responsive and transformative customer experience.

If chief information officers (CIOs) at insurance companies received a 10% increase in their discretionary technology budgets, 37% of them would allot the increase to core transformation and cloud projects, according to a Deloitte survey of insurance CIOs. That’s 14% higher than the second highest category CIOs would choose, innovation and growth. The legacy core systems that have traditionally managed business processes for insurers are growing increasingly outdated, and insurance companies are looking for new, flexible, intuitive replacement systems.

What Is an Insurance Policy Administration System?

A policy administration system is a software system that allows an insurer to manage various group and individual life insurance and annuity products. Modern administration systems allow for end-to-end lifecycle management, including quotes, underwriting, claims, renewals, and all policy records and actions.

Traditionally, legacy systems focused on a specific product, such as group life insurance, individual life insurance, or pension products. These systems were typically inflexible and not customizable. However, with today’s digital capabilities, more insurers are seeking a single platform that can provide full end-to-end lifecycle management of group and individual life and pension products. Today, the best insurance policy administration systems facilitate digital transformation by allowing insurers to manage all existing and historical insurance policies and produce policy-specific reports from one simple dashboard.

Why Adopt a Modern Policy Administration System?

Legacy administration systems limit insurers’ growth potential because they are onerous and inflexible; they don’t allow insurance companies to nimbly respond to changing needs of customers and the market, not to mention internal needs for efficiency. To stay competitive in a rapidly changing market, insurers need systems that will help them meet pressing challenges such as:

Quickly developing and rolling out new products to meet market demands.
Providing seamless digital interactions for brokers, employers and employees with their insurance companies.
Reducing operational expenses by resolving inefficient business operations.
Streamlining information about all products and policies to provide access to real-time reporting that can inform decisions.
Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to achieve cost savings.

Legacy administration systems, designed to meet specific needs for a specific moment in time, are not equipped to help insurers face these modern challenges—or new challenges that may arise in the future. Rather than continually battling the limitations of a legacy system to manage core business processes, a modern policy administration system frees insurers to efficiently manage their current business while offering the flexibility to innovate and scale to meet new needs as they arise.

Future-Proof Your Business With a Cloud-Native PAS Solution

Insurance companies that are ready to power their businesses to move confidently into the future are turning to cloud-based policy administration systems. Not only are cloud-based technologies more efficient for IT operations, but they are “a force multiplier for generating value for the business,” according to McKinsey. “Insurers that use the cloud effectively can unlock such desirable capabilities as providing omnichannel experiences for customers, developing a diverse portfolio of integrated services, and rolling out solutions at unprecedented speeds.”

A cloud-based or cloud-native policy administration system offers insurers the ability to use advanced analytics and automation to quickly determine where the needs are, and to rapidly develop solutions and products to meet those needs. With a cloud-native system, your insurance company’s core processes are automated, specific business data is always available at your fingertips, and your business is positioned to quickly take advantage of growth opportunities.

When you harness a cloud-based policy management system, your insurance company can boost efficiencies and cut costs on a number of core processes, such as:

Policy administration
Member services
Risk assessments
Pricing models
Loss mitigation
Analytics with reporting

But a modern policy administration system isn’t simply designed to deliver solutions for the pressing needs of the current market. That would be too similar to traditional legacy systems, which have often caused bottlenecks and sluggish responses in the insurance industry. Instead, when the system is cloud-based, it provides a strong digital core with the built-in capability to scale and change for future growth, adapting to market disruptions constantly updating to meet current needs.

Does Your Business Have the Zahara Advantage?

Zahara is a cloud-native, open policy administration system that automates complex processes, lowers operations risk and improves productivity. Using digital ledger technology, Zahara efficiently gathers, stores and secures data, offering end-to-end insurance policy administration. With a policy administration system like Zahara, insurance companies can gain a number of competitive advantages.

Get Ahead of Competition

While competitors flounder and work to overcome the limitations of their legacy systems and processes, Zahara users are able to quickly respond to changing needs in the market. With a cloud-native system like Zahara, your insurance business can reduce time and expense in bringing new products from concept to market by using simplified building block product creation interfaces and an industry leading calculation engine.

Transparent, Streamlined Customer Experience

Using your policy administration system should be as easy and intuitive as shopping online, banking online or interacting on social media. Built with the customer experience in mind, Zahara offers customizable workflows and intuitive design to provide a streamlined user experience. At any time, users can access real-time views and reports that provide a snapshot or a deep dive of what’s happening in their insurance business.

Efficiency and Productivity

Using an intuitive administrative interface, or via a native API service layer, Zahara users can streamline product and policy maintenance activities from wherever they are. Built-in automation and operational efficiencies features make it easy to boost productivity, while data analytics help users stay updated on the changing needs of their customers and the industry.

Scalability and Growth

When the core processes of your insurance business are all available and managed via the cloud, scaling the business is almost automatic. Zahara allows users to harness the power of artificial intelligence and automation to grow the business in the areas and directions that make the most sense, and at a rapid pace.

Reduced Costs

Cloud technologies eliminate the need for purchasing hardware and software, as well the costs for operating, maintaining and updating legacy technology. As a result, adopting a policy administration system like Zahara translates into significantly reduced technology costs—with significantly increased productivity gains.

Key Features of the Modern Insurance Policy Management System

When looking for a modern policy administration system, insurers should seek a solution that includes the following vital features:

Policy management. This might be obvious, but any policy administration system should manage everything related to insurance policies, including issuance, updating, renewal and cancellation.
Underwriting. Today’s policy management systems can also speed up the underwriting process by automating tasks like gathering data and analyzing data. The system can mine data from a variety of sources and access the information insurers need whenever they need it.
Quoting. Modern management systems can provide accurate quotes to potential customers without them having to make a phone call or visit an office.
Claims. An automated system can quickly assign a claim, evaluate for fraud, issue payments and generate reports, speeding up the process of managing claims and improving customer satisfaction.
Security. Protecting customers’ personal data, as well as your insurance company’s own data, is vitally important. The best policy administration systems include built-in security features and data protection capabilities.
Analytics. A modern policy management system can help you manage sales, distribution, and customer engagement with real-time data, offering robust analytics and
business-building insights across the entire life insurance and annuity product lifecycle.
Open. Today’s most effective insurance policy management systems are open, meaning they are designed for sharing information and partnerships across the insurance industry.

Manage the Challenges of Digital Transformation With Zahara

The insurance industry is notoriously late at adopting new technologies; however, with increased competition from insurtechs and changing consumer demands, it has become increasingly clear that insurers must undergo digital transformation in order to survive and thrive in the future. Rather than getting mired down by all the complex technological solutions, a simple, flexible, open life insurance software solution can help insurers adapt for a changing future without missing a beat.

Zinnia offers Zahara, an open, end-to-end policy administration system and life insurance solution that lays the groundwork for insurers to provide a frictionless insurance journey from search to fulfillment to servicing to claim.