What is Insurance Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or Insurance Outsourcing?
Insurance business process outsourcing (BPO) is also called insurance outsourcing, insurance back office service, or insurance virtual assistant service. It is a business activity insurance entities (insurance companies, insurance agencies, and even insurance third-party claims administrators) outsource their in-house time-consuming and repetitive workload to another company to handle their daily routine operations. The main purpose of insurance outsourcing is to make the best use of all resources to make insurance entities more competitive.
Insurance entities are very interested in engaging in outsourcing as there are multiple benefits. But until 2021, there are only 53% of insurance agencies in the status of partnering with insurance BPO companies. This reveals many insurance agencies are still in a dilemma about whether to engage in insurance outsourcing or not. Obviously, the improved efficiency, productivity and profitability do make insurance companies more competitive. That’s why almost half of them select outsourcing services. On the other hand, the insurance entities have a deep concern about their information security and abuse. Some agencies outsource benefit-related processes to their offshore vendors, so insurance outsourcing companies have already had a chance to get some regional US citizens’ personal information. We can say that insurance entrepreneurs are taking responsibility first and seeking profit second.
Insurance business process outsourcing processors usually log on to remote terminal servers and handle operations within insurance agencies’ computer desktops and agency systems. This requires insurance entities to trust their vendor and grant corresponding access like email account, agency management system, carrier website login, certificate and online rating platform login.
What Workload Can Be Outsourced to Insurance Outsourcing Companies?
As mentioned above, your in-house operation team can outsource the routine heavy workload to the off-shore team with standard and detailed task procedures. It enables your CSRs/account managers to order high-level work results instead of doing it themselves. The key factor is you have enough workload and standard task procedures, and your operation manager is very easy to oversee the insurance processing quality without time-to-time communication & confirmation during processing.
Think about your service assistants focusing on the insurance data entry all the daytime without talking. Why not give them more challenging opportunities and outsource those tasks? Depending on your business, you can choose insurance outsourcing workload from any department below:
- P&C Insurance (Commercial Line)
- Personal Line
- Call Center
- Benefit Department
- Accounting Department
- Online Marketing
Does Real Time Communication Matter for Insurance Outsourcing?
There is a common misunderstanding that insurance outsourcing companies should provide real-time communication services during the daily process. In fact, insurance agencies are most likely to find a team based in Asia like the Philippines and India, as those countries have widespread outsourcing service experiences and population advantages. One of the solutions is that off-shore teams work on the night shift and provide quick responsive service for urgent tasks like certificate issuance, change requests and online quoting.
The core requirement of insurance outsourcing is to have a dedicated team to handle your non-speaking & non-revenue-generating activities. You only need frequent email communication in the first 3-4 months and immediately reach out to the processing team leader. See the following points to understand why most of the time operation team doesn’t need real-time communication for your outsourcing workload: