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Will your insurance IT investments pay off?

April 12, 2021 | 78 views

Automated claims processing, price comparison platforms, mobile bill paying—these are just some of the digital services that insurance customers expect and insurers want to provide. As the demand for digital skyrockets, so does the need for insurers to invest in IT. In the past seven years, the share of IT in total operating costs of property-and-casualty (P&C) insurers increased 22 percent. The rise of digital means technology is no longer a cost center. Rather, it is an asset that, if managed well, can increase growth and profitability.

But do these IT investments pay off? As the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates already increasing cost pressures, insurers’ IT budgets are under scrutiny; they want to see the business impact of their IT investments.

Insurers with targeted IT investments achieve better growth and performance

Data from McKinsey’s Insurance 360° benchmarking survey provide strong evidence of the positive business impact of targeted IT investments. In fact, insurers that invest more in technology outpace competitors that don’t pursue targeted investments in business measures such as gross written premium (GWP) growth, return to shareholders, and expense and loss ratio (exhibit).

As an example, in life insurance, companies that invested more in IT saw a greater reduction in expense ratios (by 2.0 percentage points) and higher returns on technical reserves2 (1.7 percentage points) when compared with insurers with lower IT investments. Insurers achieved these outcomes within three to five years of making their investments.
For P&C insurers, those with high IT investments achieved approximately twice the top-line GWP growth of low IT investors. High IT investments also produced a greater reduction in combined ratios when compared with those with low IT investment.

Four areas for targeted IT investment

So what kinds of technology investments can help insurers achieve growth and improve productivity and performance? Investments in four areas are critical:

Marketing and sales: Marketing technology solutions can increase sales and processing efficiency, improve the quality of core customer-facing processes such as policy inquiries and policy applications, and improve customers’ overall experiences. McKinsey’s Insurance 360° benchmarking data show that tech investments in this category can facilitate top-line growth for P&C insurers by up to 20–40 percent; for life insurers, that growth could be 10–25 percent over a three- to five-year period.

Underwriting and pricing: Automated underwriting fraud detection can improve the likelihood that insurers correctly identify fraud and set accurate prices. A pricing tool kit that analyzes pricing across competitors and enables a flexible, more segmented market versus technical pricing further improves profit margins. Insurers that deploy these and other product, pricing, and underwriting technologies have seen improvements in their profit margins by 10–15 percent in P&C insurance and 3–5 percent in life insurance.

Policy servicing: Workflow automation, artificial intelligence–based decision support, and user experience technologies in policy servicing and within IT can improve the customer self-service experience and automate back-office processes, thus reducing IT and operations expenses. And state-of-the-art self-servicing options will reduce processing times and even improve customer experience. An analysis of programs for large-scale insurance IT modernization finds that insurers that deploy these and other product, pricing, and underwriting technologies have seen improvements in their profit margins by 5–10 percent in P&C insurance and 10–15 percent in life insurance.

Claims: P&C insurers can use automated case processing—machine-learning technology trained to process basic claims cases—to segment more complex cases and significantly improve claims accuracy. Combined with better partner integration and steering technologies embedded in a transformation of the claims operating model, such technologies can help P&C insurers improve profit margins by 25–40 percent, according to McKinsey analysis of large-scale IT modernization programs.

To realize the full value of IT investments, insurers must strategically allocate their resources and view tech as an asset, not a tool.

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Securian Financial collaborates with “BenefitBump” to enhance education among expectant parents

SECURIAN FINANCIAL | September 30, 2022

To provide greater assistance to employees growing their families, Securian Financial in a first among insurance carriers is adding “BenefitBump” as a value-added service. The BenefitBump service can be used with Securian Financial’s group hospital indemnity insurance issued by Securian Life Insurance Company. BenefitBump improves outcomes for both employers and employees by helping growing families navigate their employers’ benefits and time off programs to build plans for balancing work and life. The program was designed for all paths to parenthood, including childbirth, adoption and families seeking fertility support. Participants are provided with education tools and live support from licensed emotional health clinicians. “Employees expecting a new child are often overwhelmed with information and unaware of all the benefits available to them through their employers, BenefitBump’s trained care navigators are experts in workplace benefit programs for expecting parents. They guide parents through the journey of growing their families from pre-birth planning to post-birth childcare while ensuring that they are maximizing their available benefits. For employers, this can be a powerful tool for retention, especially of working mothers.” -Darin Reeser, regional director of supplemental health benefit sales for Securian Financial According to ongoing BenefitBump participant survey responses, 66% of participants say the service reduces stress and anxiety and 83% say it increases benefit awareness and utilization. In addition, a 2021 study of program participants found that 98% successfully returned to work. Group hospital indemnity insurance is a workplace supplemental health policy that pays a pre-determined benefit to insured employees who experience a hospital stay covered by the policy. Employees can use the benefit to pay for out-of-pocket expenses not covered by their major medical insurance, or however they wish. With Securian Financial, insured employees do not have to experience a hospital stay to use BenefitBump. In fact, according to BenefitBump, since the service’s inception, nearly one-fifth of participants have engaged the service while family planning. Workplace supplemental health benefits on the rise According to a study conducted by benefits broker WTW, more employers are turning to supplemental health benefits to help protect employees from big medical bills and loss of income. The study, conducted between February 23 and March 12, 2021, found that among 238 organizations employing 3.7 million people, 42% offered group hospital indemnity insurance and 57% offered group critical illness insurance. By 2022, 65% of the organizations said they would offer hospital indemnity insurance to their employees, and 76% said they would offer critical illness insurance. Additionally, LIMRA, a life insurance researcher and trade organization, reported recently that workplace supplemental health benefit premium rose 6% in 2021, to nearly $2.6 billion. A group insurance leader Securian Financial offers group life, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) and supplemental health insurance products to employers nationwide. The company specializes in large public and private employer plans with 1,000 or more participants. Since issuing its first group life insurance policy in 1917, Securian Financial through its subsidiaries, Minnesota Life Insurance Company and Securian Life Insurance Company has grown to become the third-largest direct writer of group life insurance in the United States. The company is the top provider of group life insurance to state governments, 16, and has an extensive list of Fortune 500 employer clients, including 18 of the Fortune 100. ABOUT SECURIAN FINANCIAL At Securian Financial, we’re here for family. And we’re here because of it. We’re guided by our purpose: helping customers build secure tomorrows. Since 1880, we’ve been building a uniquely diversified company that has outlasted economic ups and downs while staying true to our customers. We’re committed to the markets we serve, providing insurance, investment and retirement solutions that give families the confidence to focus on what’s truly valuable: banking memories with those who matter most.

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