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Blog » Insurance Outsourcing: Business Continuity Plan for Insurers

Insurance Outsourcing: Business Continuity Plan for Insurers

Last updated: 12 Sep, 2023 By | 6 Minutes Read

Insurance Outsourcing

COVID-19 has brought along a massive stone of challenges when it comes to insurance business continuity plan. Amid all this, an increasing number of patients, business disruption cases, and non-fulfillment of contracts resulted in a growing number of health/business insurance claims.

The insurance industry is hit from many sides. However, the key to getting through these times is to focus on insurance policy administration while efficiently handling claims processing. Adding to that, employee safety, customer service, and a business continuity plan are essential.

Challenges for Insurers Amid COVID-19 Crisis

There’s a lot of complexity in insurance processes that included several time-consuming functions. Besides, insurance businesses usually have a highly collaborative work environment with underwriters, policy checkers, sellers, issuers, external brokers, agents, etc. This can increase the level of complexity in times of crisis, like the current.

There has been a series of challenges faced by Insurers since the COVID-19 outbreak spread across the globe. While many insurance companies are striving for survival, recovery, growth, insurance business process outsourcing can work as a business continuity plan, helping insurers get back on track.

1) The sudden need for remote working

Business operations disrupted when WHO declared a public health emergency Several industries, including insurance, led their staff to work remotely within a short period. While working extra hours to cope with increasing claims, it was challenging to practice ‘work from home’, especially for those lacking technology and staff.

2) Increase in customer queries

Insurers experienced a rapid and massive hike in customer queries; coronavirus-affected people with insurance raise questions for claim as many policies don’t cover viruses like the COVID-19. With travel restrictions worldwide, insurers observed a rising number of phone calls asking about their travel insurance claims. Insured-people across the globe have similar queries.

3) Fraud risk management

Though clear guidelines are given to employees covering remote connectivity and working policies, it is not easy to protect your insurance business from external or internal fraud attempts. You need a team to monitor connections and processes handled from remote locations. Process monitoring, which is challenging to carry out amid crisis, is essential for scanning and detection of unusual business activities.

4) Communication

Communication issues have come up as a barrier to operations amid the coronavirus outbreak. Insurers are putting their best effort to protect their channels through which internal staff collaborates, and leaders connect with teams. Not only this, but they also want to ensure delivering accurate and valid information to customers in response to their queries.

5) Cybersecurity 

Amid all the panic and struggle, cybersecurity is another big challenge insurers face these days. Hackers and others with harmful intentions are likely to target the financial market as 70-80% of the staff is working from home. Weaker network security and platforms protected by not-so-strong passwords are prone to breach, which may lead to data theft and a significant threat to customers’ personal information.

6) Customer experience

There’s no excuse for not paying attention to customer experience because everything in insurance revolves around them. Insurers are dealing with customers that have no other options than relying upon their insurers to cover their suddenly-increased healthcare expenses. Similarly, many small businesses, big companies are dependent upon their business insurance provider. In such a crisis, workplace restrictions and short operating hours, are adding more burdens. All of this has become a tough challenge for insurers, making it more challenging to deliver satisfactory customer experience.

How outsourcing firms help with insurance business continuity plan amidst a pandemic:

Workload Management

Due to the current health emergency, employees are expected to be absent due to several reasons; some might avoid travel, while some might be dealing with other health problems (handling them via home quarantine). Staff shortage can result in workflow disruptions, ultimately leading to customer dissatisfaction. A trusted outsourcing firm can help manage the workload and clear backlog within a short period without compromising quality, giving you complete support in running your insurance business smoothly.

Process Management

Most of the workforce employed in the industry is working from home or through other means provided by employers. With the increment in user traffic connected remotely, employees (users) can experience bandwidth fluctuation and latency issues. Here, outsourcing can be a viable option. Outsourcing firms are experts at setting up digital platforms, software subscriptions, utilization of tools, and have secure IT infrastructure as they always work remotely. Insurers can assess processes that are most disrupted and outsource them to get the work done on time. This will ensure operations don’t get interrupted, and acquired resources are being fully used.

Time Management

When several challenges arise at the same time, an environment is created where company leaders have to wear many hats. There might be some requirements for building new strategies, work policies, crisis management measures, customer service guidelines, etc. Having multiple responsibilities, decision-makers often get less time to manage regular business activities. Outsourcing some of the back-office processes can free up a significant amount of time that they can invest in operations such as marketing, sales, customer support while paying enough attention to overall business productivity.

Expense Management

Since revenue is affected, insurers are cutting overhead to balance profit-loss or reserve cash. Again, outsourcing can be a great option here. Companies can find reliable outsourcing firms offering quality services at lower costs. Besides, it can be an excellent way to maintain business continuity at affordable prices.

    How can Cogneesol help in your insurance business continuity plan?

    Cogneesol has a large team of professionals who can help with back-office management by providing support in handling different insurance processes. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, we are ready to provide appropriate solutions to help your insurance business tackle most challenges. We offer;

    Policy management services: We help insurance agencies with policy administrative processes such as policy checking, renewal, endorsements, loss runs reports, cancellation, reinstatement, and more, with complete operational transparency.

    Claims management services: Need help with claims processing workload? You need not worry; for your insurance business, we have skilled professionals that can efficiently handle claims management jobs like Claims set up, Verification and Validation, Claims Processing Services, Claims Adjudication Services, Subrogation, Maturities Processing, Early Retirement /Withdrawals /Reconciliations, File Closure & Portfolio management, First Notice of Loss, etc.

    Commission management: Our team of expert and speedy data entry operators can quickly organize data concerning agents’ commission. Besides, we can responsibly manage commissions accounting, eliminating costly errors.

    Underwriting support: It often takes a lot of time to review customer responses, quotes, analyzing loss run, etc. We provide complete support with all underwriting processes, ensuring your insurance policies are appropriate as per the customers’ requirements.

    Accounting services: Insurance accounting is our specialty; for your insurance business, we can handle various accounting functions, including data entry, AP/AR, payroll, reconciliation, etc. In order to bring out the best in accounting, we also provide services like financial analysis, profit and loss statements, management reports, etc.

    Cogneesol is a leading insurance back-office service provider with more than 12 years of experience in the outsourcing industry. Our insurance experts can work on your projects as per your guidelines, business requirements. To know about our services in detail, contact us today. Call us at + 1 646 688 2821 or email at [email protected].

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