How can Insurance players tackle new challenges with Quality Engineering?

The Straits Times in one of its latest reports mentions, ‘The life insurance industry had a mixed year in 2018 with growth in some areas but contraction in others. The sector posted a 3 per cent expansion in weighted new business premiums to $4.2 billion for the 12 months compared with 2017.’ While some reports even suggest that the growth has accelerated in the industry. Nevertheless, the chronic pain points continue to be technology adoption and enhancing customer experience. In this overall juggle, how can the Insurance sector leverage Quality Engineering to offer more than just Insurance service to its customers?

Why the Insurance sector must keep reinventing itself?

The Insurance sector spans across many verticals and even drills down to the core needs within that vertical. For instance, within property insurance, insurance policies can get as specific as a plan that covers the damage from natural calamities such as earthquakes or floods. A recent report suggests how Condo Insurance Market is flourishing Worldwide with players such as GEICO, Liberty Mutual, USAA, Erie Insurance, American Family Insurance, Travelers Insurance, AIG, AXA, and Allianz.

As the risks reinvent themselves, the requirements and ideas influencing the industry shall keep evolving. It will give much more business scope, but alongside challenges to deal with all these fresh expectations. Addressing specific and peculiar needs of every industry can be a taxing affair. The work for the insurance company doesn’t just end after issuing a policy.

The customer journey just begins with it. Apart from tracking the premiums and the maturity of the policy, the insurance partner needs to dig in for more opportunities to upsell its solutions.

Industry reports also suggest the growing number of Insurtechs that are coming up and offering agile and flexible solutions for various purposes and even micro-events. Additionally, retail giants and various biggies in other industries are independently offering bundled up insurance package with their products. The scope for the industry is changing and expanding, which can also be a threat for traditional players in the industry as well. So, how can this be solved?

In this entire chaos, technology and IT platforms can become an enabler for the industry and support in the digital transformation process as well. However, if we have to believe this, if technology is the solution, how robust can it be to sustain through the digital uncertainties and risks?

What are CXOs in the Insurance sector worried about? Can Quality Engineering make things smoother?
Is it Customer Experience, Customer Lifecycle Management, or indefinite market conditions? What is impacting the day-to-day business strategy of a top executive from the insurance segment? And how can technology and Quality Engineering handhold the insurance carriers through the entire transformation process?

These are not just pain points, but also strategic focus areas that can be worked on.

Get to know your customers, how? Make QE your Cornerstone.

Initial interactions and serving the customer’s immediate requirement will only help you to scratch the tip of the iceberg. Your customer-facing software applications will help you to go further and actually get an understanding of their long-term concerns. For instance, a vehicle insurance might be an immediate requirement, but if the vehicle is being used to facilitate a farmland activity, the scope for an insurance player changes altogether. Sourcing data and managing the Big Data solutions with effective Big Data Testing solutions can help insurance players to segment and sub-segment their customer’s needs.

Quality Engineering with its focussed principles and practice of product and service quality assurance, and control help to condition various development and testing requirements. These Quality Engineering (QE) processes and practices must come into practice right from the beginning of application development and stay through the customer lifecycle.

Adopt Technology solutions that can ease and enhance your business flow

If you are considering Artificial Intelligence for your user applications or for your workflow applications, ensure that it serves the business purpose and gives you the estimated RoI. Quality Engineering enables developers through the process of technology adoption by gauging its compatibility with the existing applications and the already operational legacy systems.

Ultimately, the technology platform must practically support a particular customer-driven purpose and help you engage better with your target segments and serve them as per their requirements. In the same string, it has to help identify the ongoing hiccups in the process and help the organization to improve processes and upsell their products. This can be made possible with regular quality checks at every step through the implementations.

Understanding the trends and aligning your objectives

In the current scenario, the insurance sector needs some serious predictive intelligence for its business. It can be facilitated via advisories, AI-enabled tools, algorithmic decision making mechanisms, or in-person services. Ultimately, the task is to align these findings within your system’s working DNA and synergizing the parallel universes to estimate what’s coming.

Quality Engineering efforts enable teams to bring a strategic and result-oriented approach that can help automate and integrate the entire landscape for seamless functioning. Continuous Testing, Continuous Development and Integration, Service Virtualizations are practices that can help bring synergy between what’s around you and what you actually need to meet your business objectives.

Customer-centricity is at the core of the Digital Transformation process, which can be made possible with effective QE efforts and dedication at every stage of development and innovation. Technological innovation cannot be an impediment, if your software systems work through a defined a process that is not only defined, but also flexible to absorb your ad-hoc requirements. Insurance Carriers need to take up these challenges to optimize relevant technologies and work towards building brand loyalty and trust.