Power Up Your Product Development With Repeatable Processes

Agility and speed-to-market capabilities remain critical for an insurer looking to grow their business. In the highly saturated P&C market developing and launching new products quicker than the competition is vital.

Easier said than done! According to a Deloitte study, it usually takes 12 to 18 months to roll out a new insurance product. Even modifying existing coverage requires three to six months.

The mandate for speed is hampered by outdated legacy applications and operational silos. Often overlooked is an insurer’s inability to create replicable processes to build efficiency. To put it plainly, launching a new product means doing many things that the insurer has done before. With a structured methodology for product launch, insurers can use these repeatable tasks as a basis for customization rather than the inevitable mountain of repetitive busywork.

Speed to market doesn’t just mean faster product launch, of course. It also means updating products quickly and pushing them out across multiple distribution networks. Internal inefficiencies create friction, resulting in product rollout that is both time- and labor-intensive.

To address the twin challenges of accelerating the launch of new products as well as the maintenance of existing products, P&C insurers are levelling up their agility with substantial investments in product development solutions at scale. A modern product development solution must provide a structured methodology to launch products fast and make products available as a service.

Creating a shared blueprint using a product development solutions helps insurers expedite the repetitive launch processes for multiple products and geographies in product development, maintenance, and rollout. That blueprint includes integrating with administrative systems and portals, preparing the necessary materials for risk assessment and underwriting, and all customer-facing capabilities.

This is the first post in our new blog series on the possibilities and challenges of product development in P&C insurance. We’re sharing our expertise on creating and maintaining insurance products to give you new ideas to enhance the ease of doing business. We’ll look at lessons learned from our clients, specific case studies, thought leadership, and technology trends that affect your product development processes.

We’ll be posting more content on thought-provoking technology topics that affect the industry in the following weeks. Our next topic is the top pain points in product development.

To learn more about the power of repeatable processes in product launch, check out our case study library to learn how we helped Players Health achieved an impressive 90-day launch for their new GL product for sports organizations as well as other success stories from our clients.

At OwlSurance, we have years of experience working with our insurer and MGA clients to streamline their business processes. We help our customers prioritize ease of doing business and provide the technology and insurance know-how to help them get there.

1 Product development data from Deloitte.

About OwlSurance

At OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, Inc., we offer a unified data platform because we believe in the power of unified data to transform how people do business. Let us help accelerate your data journey with the right technology and the expertise you need to put it to work for you. For more information, visit us at www.owlsurance.com.

Streamlining Submissions Means Less Busywork

An agent can spend 20 minutes to over an hour filling out an insurance application, depending on the line of business and risk complexity – and that’s just for a renewal. What each insurer requires in terms of forms, data, and process also varies. Agents typically work with an average of five carriers. Multiply all of that paperwork and processing per submission per insurer, and it becomes clear how much time an agent must dedicate to busywork.

Within the insurer’s organization, the submission lifecycle can lengthen even more through siloed, high-touch processes without a coordinated approach to customer acquisition. Meanwhile, the new prospect or renewing policyholder is waiting for indicative pricing to decide which insurer and agent can best serve them.

Submissions are critical to ease of doing business, market share, and agent and customer satisfaction. Agents and insurers alike lose out with inefficient submission processes and risk losing or disappointing customers who have to wait.

Fortunately, this is a solvable problem. Efficiency gains in the submission process benefit everyone involved. An insurer who can streamline the submission-to-quote journey attracts and retains more agents and customers. At the same time, agents spend less time checking boxes and rekeying data in favor of serving their customers. Time spent in front of a computer screen is time they can’t spend more productively, dealing with the people they represent.

By leveraging and pre-filling 3rd-party data from external sources, insurers empower agents to create quotes fast. Information is more accurate, more current, and less likely to contain entry errors. By fulfilling all submission guidelines at once, insurers can minimize back and forth with the agent, resulting in quicker quote response times.

They also reduce errors in their submissions and increase compliance by automating the quote review process. When the quality of submissions increases, quoting processes become faster with a higher overall rate of closure.

This blog post is the second in a series on streamlining your quoting processes with an emphasis on getting the most bang for your buck. Our next topic is the top pain points in the Qualification stage of the quoting process.

We’re sharing our expertise on the quoting lifecycle to give you new ideas to enhance the ease of doing business. We’ll look at lessons learned from our clients, specific case studies, thought leadership, and technology trends that affect your submission and quoting processes.

To learn more in the meantime, you can look through our case study library for quoting success stories, like the 85% reduction in quoting time achieved by our client Appalachian Underwriters. We also helped a regional carrier shift more than 60% of their BOP business to straight-through processing.

At OwlSurance, we have years of experience working with our insurer and MGA clients to simplify their submissions and streamline their business processes. We help our customers prioritize ease of doing business and provide the technology and insurance know-how to help them get there.

1 Renewal timeframe statistics from Insurance Business America.

About OwlSurance

At OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, Inc., we offer a unified data platform because we believe in the power of unified data to transform how people do business. Let us help accelerate your data journey with the right technology and the expertise you need to put it to work for you. For more information, visit us at www.owlsurance.com.

Digital Transformation in Lean Times: A New Blog Series from OwlSurance

“Digital transformation” has been a key mandate for the P&C insurance industry for over 25 years, but Verisk and APCIA just released industry data that puts a different spin on it. The news isn’t great – so it’s more important than ever to prioritize high-impact digital initiatives that won’t hurt your bottom line.
2022 wasn’t a good year for the P&C insurance industry, according to newly released financial results from Verisk and American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) reported a variety of data points that show losses increasing at a startling rate while income is falling.
  • Overall underwriting loss is the highest it’s been since 2011, at a staggering $26.9B. That’s more than a sixfold increase over losses in 2021.
  • At the same time, net income decreased by more than a third. Other key indicators including surplus, combined ratio, incurred costs and loss adjustment expenses are also worrying in light of increasing natural disaster exposure and inflation.

As lousy as these results are, there’s still good news for insurers. Digital transformation is a way of investing in efficiency, cost reductions, and staff satisfaction as well as staying up to date with technological advances.

A tight financial situation forces companies to focus their spending on the most important projects. It’s easy to forget that digital transformation can be tackled in smaller, more manageable chunks rather than as a single juggernaut initiative.

In fact, that’s the smartest way to do it! You can still impress your customers and prospects and further your digital savvy – without breaking the bank.
In our new blog series, we’ll lay out actionable recommendations for low-cost, high-impact ways to better leverage your existing technology.

Upcoming topics include:

  • SEO for non-experts
  • Leveraging industry influencers
  • Collaborative customer acquisition

We’ll also discuss easy technological improvements to increase automation, including straight-through processing, and speeding product launch and maintenance with repeatable processes.

The bottom line is that possibilities abound to leverage technology without hurting your bottom line.

1 See Reinsurance News for more details on the new industry data from Verisk and APCIA reported March 30, 2023.

About OwlSurance

At OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, Inc., we offer a unified data platform because we believe in the power of unified data to transform how people do business. Let us help accelerate your data journey with the right technology and the expertise you need to put it to work for you. For more information, visit us at www.owlsurance.com.

On-Demand Webinar: Inland Marine Quoting Through OwlSurance Quote Management for AAIS

Enjoy our on-demand webinar on the new OwlSurance quoting solution for AAIS COP and Inland Marine lines of business. You can learn more about the new offering here or contact us at owlsurance@valuemomentum.com.

New Research Shows Agents Flourishing – What This Means for Quoting

Today, agents are flourishing, according to brand-new research published last week by Property & Casualty 360 and the PIA. They’ve always been a vital part of the insurance distribution ecosystem, but these latest findings show exactly how crucial they are as our industry grows. Two in three agents grew their businesses in 2022, and more than a quarter grew by more than 10%. Even during the pandemic, agents did good business as people turned to their agents as trusted advisors to recommend increased coverage for better protection. Nourishing those relationships with policyholders has given agents this impressive growth as the market has picked up.

Insurers can benefit from this growth so long as they view their agent relationships as a high priority. Year after year, agents have emphasized how important ease of doing business is in their work with carriers. All else being equal between two insurers, ease of doing business is liable to tip the scales. To put it simply, making life easier for agents is good for the bottom line.

Ease of doing business is an enormous and nebulous concept. It’s easy to agree to its importance and hard to figure out how to make significant improvements. In addition, insurers need to invest in process and technology innovation that will create the biggest impact.

Over the next few weeks, we’re zeroing in on quoting as an area where insurers can get a lot of bang for their buck to improve ease of doing business. Quoting is a complex process, especially for more complicated risks. There will always be back and forth between the carrier and the agent and the prospect. What insurers can do is find ways to streamline their processes by reducing friction and touchpoints.

In this new blog series, we’ll examine the quoting process one stage at a time: Submission, Qualification and Pricing. We’ll share our expertise on the top pain points in each stage while offering tangible, actionable ways to reduce friction and promote ease of doing business. We’ll look at lessons learned from our clients, specific case studies, thought leadership and technology trends that affect your quoting processes.

To learn more in the meantime, you can look through our case study library for quoting success stories, like the 85% reduction in quoting time achieved by our client Appalachian Underwriters.

At OwlSurance, we have years of experience working with our insurer and MGA clients to simplify their submissions and streamline their business processes. We help our customers prioritize ease of doing business and provide the technology and insurance know-how to help them get there.

Our next topic: the top pain points and ways forward in the Submission stage, which will help guide you in determining where to prioritize efficiency gains.

1 2023 Independent Insurance Agent Survey by NU Property & Casualty and the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents.

About OwlSurance

At OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, Inc., we offer a unified data platform because we believe in the power of unified data to transform how people do business. Let us help accelerate your data journey with the right technology and the expertise you need to put it to work for you. For more information, visit us at www.owlsurance.com.

Players Health Launches Bespoke Sports Insurance Product and MGA Operations Backed by OwlSurance

In less than 90 days, Players Health launched General Liability nationwide and is now writing GL and A&H nationwide in the US and Canada.


Piscataway, NJ – February 16, 2023 – OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, Inc., is pleased to announce Players Health has successfully launched their MGA operations with a four-month go-live for General Liability and Accident & Health. The GL product was launched nationwide in a remarkable 90 days, followed by A&H deployment and expansion to all 50 US states and several Canadian provinces.

Players Health’s successful new insurance business was made possible with a broad move to a cloud-native environment with a headless instance of Socotra Connected Core integrated with OwlSurance Quote Management System, Rating and Engage for digital engagement with agents. OwlSurance managed the implementation as a certified partner of policy administration provider Socotra.

Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Players Health provides risk management services to sports organizations seeking to manage the health of young or amateur athletes, coaches, and owners. They aim to be a one-stop shop for a variety of services to promote the health and safety of athletes in today’s sports landscape. Insurance was a natural addition to Players Health’s existing modern ecosystem of products and services and their next target for growth. They needed MGA capabilities, including agent tools and online quoting, to offer a bespoke insurance product to their clients.

“The ability to deliver insurance products digitally was critically important to us as a way of expanding our top-notch risk management services for sports organizations,” said Tyrre Burks, Founder and CEO of Players Health. “In partnership with OwlSurance and Socotra, we have achieved our aggressive timeline to roll out insurance offerings to start benefiting our customers immediately.”

Sandeep Bajaj, Group Chief Information Officer of Players Health, added, “A seamless and engaging digital experience is one of our key differentiators for our clients. With these cloud-native tools from OwlSurance and Socotra supported by OwlSurance’ tech concierge services, we’ve built the foundation for success in our insurance expansion. It’s now fast and easy for us to launch products quickly in multiple geographies and pivot with tweaks to both products and experience flows to address market changes and new audiences.”

Players Health selected OwlSurance to implement Socotra Connected Core with a robust combination of OwlSurance solutions and services for front-end, rating, digital engagement, and API and integration gateways. Players Health also forged a strategic applications partnership with OwlSurance. Going forward, OwlSurance will provide a new case management app for Players Health and support all of the company’s current and future apps. OwlSurance also provides ongoing tech concierge services for Players Health, including API and integrations, infrastructure support, and a help desk. A full case study is now available at owlsurance.com.

“For Players Health, the success of the project hinged on being able to rapidly add new products to existing, streamlined quote-bind journeys, make product and experience changes in a low-code environment, and stitch together multiple systems within native cloud capabilities,” said Anant Iyer, President, Markets and Outreach for OwlSurance. “User experience is one of the most important key differentiators that Players Health identified in our initial meetings, and we were pleased to be able to meet all of their requirements while going live in all US states in 90 days.”

ABOUT VALUEMOMENTUM

 ValueMomentum provides IT services and solutions to insurance, financial services, and health care. Customers choose ValueMomentum due to the company’s track record of delivering value and driving momentum to customers’ business initiatives. ValueMomentum accomplishes this by applying a time-tested formula of combining strong technology expertise with deep industry experience. For more information, visit https://www.valuemomentum.com.

About Players Health

Minneapolis-based Players Health is a sports technology platform providing digital risk management services, reporting tools and insurance products to sports organizations to comply with changing athletic environments and responsibilities. Working towards establishing the safest environment for athletes, Players Health views the health and safety of athletes as a priority in today’s sports landscape. For more information, visit www.playershealth.com.

About OwlSurance
OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum, provides affordable and simplified cloud solutions and enterprise-class services that insurers need to succeed in a digital world. For more information, visit https://www.owlsurance.com.

Media Contact

OwlSurance, a cloud business unit of ValueMomentum
Lis Maguda
Senior Manager – Content Strategy
elisabeth.maguda@valuemomentum.com
617.335.2076