Taking Insurance Operations to the Next Level

Author:

CSC

Life and annuity carriers are in the business of making bets. Sometimes, however, they have to make bets decades in advance on what their future operations costs will be. New product design has to account for the estimated lifetime cost of servicing the policy. And for many life products, the result can mean servicing and supporting that policy for decades.

Given the long time frame life and annuity carriers must work with, it is not surprising there is a relentless focus on improving operating efficiency. The industry has emphasized efficiency improvement for some time now, especially with the biggest downturn since the Great Depression. In slow economies, carriers focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency. However, for many carriers, the low-hanging fruit is gone, and further gains in efficiency may come only at the expense of customer relationships.

CSC believes the industry is poised for a new wave of growth opportunity. But, is the industry’s focus on improving efficiency placing top-line growth at risk? We believe the answer is definitely “yes” — for those carriers that exclusively continue their historical patterns of cost control and efficiency improvement.

In today’s environment, carriers must focus their organizations around customer and agent effectiveness to get to the next level of performance. This will require changes in management, IT and business behaviors. Read the full article from Insurance & Technology magazine by downloading the PDF below.