How composable technology accelerates insurance provider workflow automation

Insurance firms today face intense pressure to achieve enterprise-wide workflow automation. To stay competitive and profitable, providers must streamline operations and improve employee and customer experiences. However, outdated methods, processes, and legacy systems often hinder progress in key operational areas, making it challenging to meet the automation goals that can:

• Speed the claims management process: settling claims efficiently and achieving their STP (Straight-Through Processing) and NPS (Net Promotor Score) goals.
• Protect against fraud: scoring claims to determine if the request is suspicious and requires further investigation. According to the FBI, the industry faces approximately $40 billion in fraudulent insurance claims every year.
• Supercharge customer experience: meeting (or exceeding) the expectations of a new kind of customer; one who is accustomed to the convenience, speed, and instant gratification of seamless and personalized omnichannel engagement.
• Improve data governance and regulatory compliance: contending with rigorous regulatory compliance requirements, including ESG and DEIB, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and HIPAA, among others, as well as privacy rules like the CCPA and CDPA.

How can insurers make progress?

It’s not surprising that according to a recent Deloitte survey, a staggering 95% of insurers say that they are currently laser-focused on accelerating their digital transformation initiatives. They are hard at work reinventing themselves, making the shift from inflexible, monolithic architecture to tech solutions that provide the ability (and agility), flexibility, and scalability to efficiently address both changing market conditions and competitors. Outdated systems must be replaced with future-ready technologies that will create more agile workflows and enhance their tech stack interoperability — which can lead to a higher return on their technology investment.
“Composable architecture employs interoperable solutions that can boost agility, helping companies keep pace and nimbly respond to new opportunities.
–Accenture. The case for composable architecture in insurance

Enter composable technology

One such solution is low code, composable architecture. Composable tech design offers a flexible and scalable approach that enables insurers to rapidly develop and deploy automation solutions that can streamline workflows, reduce manual intervention, and improve data accuracy.

Composable design helps insurers adapt to changing business requirements, handle increasing volumes of data, and improve overall efficiency. By embracing this approach, they can stay ahead of the competition and achieve their automation goals while meeting regulatory requirements and improving the overall customer experience.

What we can learn from LEGO®

How do we define “Interoperable solutions?” Think LEGO® blocks. Like building with blocks, composable design takes a modular approach to digital service delivery and software development. Each “block” represents a component of the technology infrastructure.

By assembling all the blocks together, one can build a system of complex applications…of any size, shape, or proportion; one where the various, small, and reusable components can be easily configured and reconfigured as needed. Each component used during the development process is pluggable and can be replaced, scaled, and consistently improved to help meet business needs. Each component has the ability to communicate with one another, i.e., “play nice” — regardless of any differences in language or programming code.

By contrast, even though monolithic systems built on a black-box architecture offer numerous features, they are difficult to update, release, adapt, and scale. In addition, because they attempt to be “one size fits all” solutions, monolithic systems don’t always extend industry-leading capabilities across the entire tech suite.

How composable technology works

Composable architecture is founded on the API-first principle; all interactions in the tech stack occur through exchanges among Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). With APIs as integral parts of the solution, complex integration issues can be avoided, and the entire tech stack scaled more quickly and easily as desired. APIs keep the “lines of communication” open between each application in the development stack and in so doing, minimize the costly investments in time and effort involved in integrating multiple services with each other as the stack is scaled.

What composable technology does

Composable architecture provides the robust, powerful foundation on which modular and scalable applications can be built. Utilizing this approach to digital transformation, a firm’s IT team can build systems that are flexible and adaptable to change, as well as maximize their current tech stack with features that enable them to:

• Enhance product and service speed-to-market times through the use of agile development.
• Reuse components and reduce costs: composable architectures’ components are highly reusable, therefore costs are reduced.
• Boost flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in: composable architectures are language agnostic. New tools can be easily integrated with an existing technology stack.
• Scale up quickly and easily in response to challenges or opportunities: composable architectures are extremely flexible, so expanding services in response to changes and opportunities is quick and easy. And, new APIs and tools to support growth can be added as needed.

Why composable technology is a necessity

To remain compliant and operationally efficient, insurers need to speed up cycle times and reduce expenses. Traditional methods are no longer effective, driving firms to seek modern solutions that offer critical features, such as:

• Agility: enables organizations to quickly respond to changing business needs and customer demands. The design allows developers to add or remove components as needed, enabling rapid innovation and iteration.
• Scalability: allows organizations to scale applications quickly and easily – replicated, reused, and combined to handle increased workloads, volumes, and complexity.
• Flexibility: enables the creation of customized solutions that meet specific business requirements. Components can be combined in different ways to create unique applications, and quickly integrate into existing systems, making it easier to adapt to changing business needs.
• Efficiency: improves operational efficiency by reducing redundancy and improving code reuse. The modular components can be developed, tested, and maintained independently, enabling developers to focus on the specific components for which they are responsible.
• Innovation: helps organizations reduce development time, accelerate time-to-market, and drive new business opportunities by leveraging pre-built, reusable components.
• Interoperability: makes it easy to share data, workflows, and business logic by enhancing interoperability between different systems and applications.
• Cost savings: reduces costs by shortening development time, improving operational efficiency, and optimizing resource utilization.

Composable tech design offers the flexibility and scalability that insurers need to streamline workflows, reduce manual intervention, and improve data accuracy. This in turn will drive their ability to adapt to changing business requirements, handle increasing volumes of data, improve overall efficiency, and importantly, simplify decision making around future technologies.

Source:  RICOH USA