Digital and analytics capabilities are competitive necessities in growing market: Novarica
Boston, MA (Feb. 13, 2019) – Group and voluntary benefits are a growth market for life insurers, and technology is becoming a key competitive necessity as they seek to streamline customer onboarding and use analytics to drive better performance in underwriting and claims. In a new Business and Technology Trends Report, Group Life/Annuity/Voluntary Benefits, research and advisory firm Novarica provides an overview of group benefit providers’ business and technology issues, data about the marketplace, and several named examples of recent technology investments by group benefit providers.
“Group and voluntary benefits carriers may better understand employers and plan sponsors than individual participants,” said Rob McIsaac , Executive Vice President of Research and Consulting, and lead author of Novarica’s new report. “this leads to challenges across fraud detection, member conservation, and to product design. In some areas, voluntary benefits providers are ahead of their group peers in leveraging data and analytics.”
Among the key findings of the report are:
- Sales growth is robust for voluntary lines. Critical illness, accident, and term life products are showing strong growth.
- Analytics are widely used for voluntary products. Applications include enrollment, identifying claims fraud, member conservation, sales reporting, and underwriting, among others.
- With no clear standard for group benefits information exchange, carriers are considering their next move. ACORD has proposed an enrollment standard-but with it based on one vendor’s offering, traction is uncertain at best.
- Insurers are still focusing on issues of product design, enrollment, marketing, and continuing improvement of administrative systems. Innovation is still taking a back seat to execution, though carriers are expressing increased concern about the need for “digital capabilities.”
A preview of the brief is available online.
Summary
This report provides an overview of group benefit providers’ business and technology issues, data about the marketplace, and several named examples of recent technology investments by group benefit providers. Top technology initiatives include benefit and policy administration systems as well as distribution enablers like underwriting workbenches, customer portals, agent portals, and easy enrollment capabilities.
Topics include:
- Recent market and financial trends;
- Active insurer landscape;
- Technology issues, priorities, and examples by functional area;
- Top technology priorities for 2019 and beyond.
Click here for the table of contents or to access the report.
About Novarica
Novarica helps more than 100 insurers make better decisions about technology projects and strategy through retained advisory services, published research, and strategy consulting. Its knowledge base covers trends, benchmarks, best practices, case studies, and vendor solutions. Leveraging the expertise of its senior team and of more than 300 CIO Research Council members, Novarica provides clients with the ability to make faster, better, more informed decisions. Its consulting services focus on vendor selection, custom benchmarking, project checkpoints, and IT strategy. For more information, visit www.novarica.com.
Source: Novarica
Tags: benefits, Novarica, trends
