The five traps to avoid when selecting an insurance core system
Written by Andrew Ly, Content Marketing Manager at Socotra
Developing innovative insurance products to meet evolving customer demands takes a lot of work. So when it comes to selecting a technology partner to support those products, you shouldn’t have to settle for outdated software, siloed data, costly upgrades, and rigid deployment approaches.
To protect your investment and avoid vendor lock-in, you need to prioritize transparency, flexibility, and accessibility. Establishing these expectations from the get-go can help you find a partner that will fit your needs today and scale with your growth tomorrow.
If you want to find the best core platform for your business, don’t overlook these five common traps:
- A lack of public documentation
- Limited implementation options
- High-cost and high-risk upgrades
- Zero control over your data
- No free trial
Trap #1: A lack of public documentation
Staying agile means swiftly adapting to market forces and launching new products with ease. But many insurers are discovering that their custom-built software and integrations can’t respond at the speed of customers or competitors. And even the most basic changes require time-consuming and costly intervention from a third-party integrator.
Socotra offers total platform transparency to your team. With our open APIs and publicly-available documentation, you can get to market 3x faster and for 50% of the cost. Your team can change ratings, add policy documents, and even configure products in minutes, not months, without relying on an outside vendor.
Bottom line: Get access to your technology provider’s documentation before you sign on the dotted line.
Trap #2: Limited implementation options
Implementing a traditional core platform can be an arduous process, especially if it requires painstaking customizations and weeks of specialized training. To make matters worse, insurers may have no choice but to enter into expensive consulting contracts with legacy providers who benefit from long development timelines.
You should have the option to handle implementation in whatever way works best for your organization and resources. With Socotra, you can quickly and affordably go live whether you leverage your own team, our deployment experts, or a certified system integrator. Our open APIs and intuitive configuration even allow for self-service implementation.
Bottom line: You should have the freedom to choose an implementation approach that fits your business.
Trap #3: High-cost and high-risk upgrades
Updating antiquated and highly customized technology can be a monumental project, requiring as many resources as implementation and costing millions of dollars in service fees and downtime. Because of this, many insurers delay upgrades and resign themselves to running out-of-date and unsupported software that limits agility, slows down product development, and introduces security concerns.
Socotra is the first true-cloud platform for insurance to offer free, continuous, and automatic upgrades. That means you never have to worry about downtime or hidden upgrade fees, as your technology is always current and supported. Our living software constantly improves behind the scenes, so you can take advantage of new features right as they become available to stay productive and continue innovating.
Bottom line: Upgrading your platform and adding new features shouldn’t incur any downtime or additional costs.
Trap #4: Zero control over your data
To develop differentiated products and personalized customer experiences, insurers must effectively collect and analyze massive amounts of data. However, legacy systems of record notoriously sequester data behind inaccessible silos and rigid data centers.
Surviving and thriving in today’s competitive market requires advanced analytics and the ability to act on insights at scale. Our open APIs enable you to efficiently integrate internal and external data sources for better risk assessment, pricing, and profitability. With our powerful data model, you can quickly act on customer learnings to build nearly any type of insurance product for any geography or distribution channel.
Bottom line: You need a platform that can leverage data to quickly and easily innovate across the entire insurance value chain.
Trap #5: No free trial
Choosing a new core platform can be a difficult decision. Most vendors offer sales demos and RFPs, but little or no hands-on experience with the technology itself. As a result, insurers may invest hundreds of thousands (even millions) of dollars only to get locked into a platform that isn’t truly a fit for their project or goals.
At Socotra, we believe you deserve to know whether our technology will meet your needs from day one. That’s why we are the only insurance core platform offering a free 30-day license. You can test-drive our technology to produce something functional and relevant, and see first-hand how our platform can grow with your business.
Bottom line: Sales demos and RFPs aren’t enough. Build something real before you commit.
Read the full blog post: The five traps to avoid when selecting an insurance core system