Reduce Your IT Backlog with Low Code for Insurance 

Insurance companies find themselves in an unenviable position: Customer expectations are on the rise, competition is getting increasingly cutthroat, and technology is evolving at a breakneck pace. In order to rise to the occasion, insurers need to innovate — but with limited IT and financial resources to work with and legacy systems in place, this is often easier said than done. 

As a result, many insurers are turning to low-code development as a means to accelerate digital transformation and deliver innovative new products and services to their customers. By leveraging low-code development, insurance companies can streamline complex and time-consuming processes such as underwriting and claims processing and rapidly develop and deploy new applications without the need for specialized programming skills.   

In this blog post, we’ll explore low code for insurance, including how insurance companies can use low-code development to reduce their IT backlog and meet the demands of today’s rapidly changing business environment. 

What Is Low Code for Insurance? 

Low code is a software application development technique that enables business users to build applications with minimal coding or programming knowledge. Low-code development platforms utilize simple, drag-and-drop interfaces that enable users to assemble pre-built components and modules and automatically generate code. Many low-code platforms come with pre-built templates and workflows to accelerate the development process and may include features such as database integration and automated testing.  

Low-code development is a form of rapid application development, an agile software development methodology that involves iterative cycles of planning, prototyping, development, and testing, with emphasis on getting a functional product to market as quickly as possible. Low code for insurance is intended to democratize programming, reduce IT backlogs, and empower insurers to evolve at faster speeds by enabling a broader subset of users to develop business applications. 

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Low Code vs. No Code: What’s the Difference? 

No-code development often comes up in conversations around low code for insurance. Although the two are closely related — and sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably — they’re not quite the same. Similar to low code, no-code development enables insurance companies to design, develop, and deploy business applications using a drag-and-drop interface.  

But no code takes the concept of democratizing development one step further than low code. Though low-code software enables a wider range of users to spin up applications, it still requires a degree of technical expertise. By comparison, no-code development empowers users with little to no coding experience to create functional applications.  

Top Challenges for Insurance IT Teams [& How Low Code Solves Them] 

Insurance IT teams face a great many challenges — challenges that low-code can help solve. These include: 

Challenge: Large Quantities of Data 

Insurance companies’ core systems house large quantities of data, including policyholder records, customer and agent data, claims data, underwriting data, and accounting and financial data. However, many of these systems are outdated and incapable of handling the volume and complexity of data generated by modern insurance operations. As a result, IT teams often struggle to manage and process this data efficiently, which can lead to slow workflows, delays in processing claims and policy applications, and increased risk of inaccurate or inconsistent data.  

These legacy systems can also be difficult and expensive to maintain and may not be compatible with newer technologies, preventing IT teams from seamlessly integrating systems.  

How Low Code Solves It 

To overcome these challenges, insurance companies must modernize their technology stacks. Low-code development can help with this by streamlining the development process, enabling IT teams to build and deploy new applications quickly and efficiently. Low code for insurance also enables IT teams to integrate legacy systems and on-premise data sources with modern platforms more easily using pre-built or custom-made connectors to hundreds of application and systems.  

These connectors make it so that insurance companies can leverage existing systems and processes while taking advantage of new technologies, which enables insurers to keep their existing investments.  

Challenge: Complex Regulatory Landscape 

Insurance companies are subject to a wide variety of regulations and standards, including data-specific regulations in the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This incredibly complex regulatory landscape presents significant challenges to insurers’ IT teams, which are tasked with developing and maintaining software systems that are adaptable, scalable, and future proof.  

How Low Code Solves It 

Under these circumstances, IT teams require the agility to respond to changing market conditions and demands, all while ensuring their systems are secure and meet user requirements. Low-code development delivers the agility and flexibility IT teams need, enabling them to spin up new applications to meet market demand. Additionally, IT teams can create pre-built compliance modules and templates that allow other teams to develop and deploy fully compliant applications.  

Challenge: Talent Shortages 

IT departments everywhere are struggling to find qualified candidates to fill open roles; developer talent, in particular, has been in short supply. By democratizing development, low code for insurance removes some of the burden from IT teams, enabling citizen developers — that is, individuals who may not possess the same skills as an IT professional — to create and deploy software applications without requiring extensive coding skills.  
 

How Low Code Solves It 

Low code for insurance even empowers business users, such as underwriters and claims adjusters, to develop and update applications that meet their specific needs. Low-code development reduces the demands on IT teams’ time, freeing them up to focus on more complex development projects and offsetting insurance companies’ hiring needs.  

Challenge: Demand for Digitalization 

Technology is evolving at a previously unimaginable pace, with insurtechs constantly setting new standards for innovation. In the current landscape, insurance companies need to bring new and innovative products to market at speed, but often lack sufficient time or resources to accommodate this demand.  

How Low Code Solves It 

Low-code development provides insurers with a flexible and agile development environment that they can use to quickly adapt to new technologies and changing business requirements. 

With low code for insurance, IT teams can rapidly prototype, develop, and deploy new applications, features, and integrations. By accelerating development, insurance companies can better respond to changing market conditions and customer demands. Additionally, many low-code platforms offer pre-built connectors and integrations, which enables insurers to leverage the latest innovations and accelerate digital transformation. 

Challenge: Legacy Systems 

Many insurance companies continue to operate on legacy core systems, which can create challenges, as these systems are often incompatible with newer technologies and are not capable of handling the large quantities of data insurers need to manage. 

How Low Code Solves It 

Low-code development can accelerate modernization by enabling IT teams to create modern, cloud-based applications that leverage the latest technology and are also able to integrate with legacy systems — all without extensive coding or specialized expertise. Low-code development platforms’ pre-built connectors and application programming interfaces (APIs) also support fast and efficient data migration, enabling insurers to improve data accuracy and accessibility.  
 

Challenge: Extensive IT Backlogs 

Most insurance companies have extensive IT backlogs to work through, but limited resources with which to do so, which can extend the time-to-market for new products.  

How Low Code Solves It 

By streamlining the development process, low code for insurance can help IT teams work through these backlogs faster and more efficiently, expediting digital transformation efforts. Insurers can also use low-code development to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as data entry and processing, underwriting, claims, and even following up on quotes and renewals, enabling teams to dedicate themselves to more strategic, value-adding initiatives.  

How Insurers Can Benefit from Low Code 

In addition to solving some of insurance IT teams’ most pressing challenges, low code for insurance offers considerable benefits, including: 

• Shorter Development Cycles: Low-code development fast-tracks research and development, enabling insurers to enhance agility, work through IT backlogs, and bring new products to market at faster speeds. 
   

• Lower Costs: Low code for insurance not only enables organizations to lower their operating costs by accelerating development — by empowering business users to take development into their own hands and freeing up IT personnel, insurers can also reduce hiring costs.  

• Seamless Integration: Many low-code development platforms offer pre-built connectors and APIs, making it easy for insurance companies to integrate even legacy core systems with external systems and new technologies. 

• Configurability: With their pre-built components, templates, and connectors, low-code development platforms allow for a high degree of configurability without the need for customization through coding. This enables insurance companies to meet specific business needs without adding unnecessary complexity.   

• Optimized Operations: By automating business-critical processes, empowering citizen developers, and freeing up IT teams, low code for insurance has the power to optimize operations and expedite digital transformation.  

Imagine the Possibilities: Low-Code Development Applications 

Insurance companies can leverage low-code development in a wide variety of ways — here are just a few potential use cases: 

• Claims Processing: Insurers can use low code to automate much of the claims process, as well as build applications to support electronic document management, provide real-time visibility into the status and progress of various claims, and facilitate collaboration between claims adjusters, agents, and other stakeholders.  

• Self-service: Policyholders expect their insurance company to provide them with an easy way to review their personal information, make payments, submit claims, and make changes to their policy. Insurers can meet this demand by using low-code development to create self-service portals; not only do these portals allow for easy access, they also enable customer service representatives to focus on higher priority or more complex requests. 

• Underwriting: Underwriting is a common use case for low code in insurance. Underwriters can create custom applications and workflows to automate the underwriting process — including aggregating data from internal and external sources, analyzing data, and assessing risk — all in service of making more informed decisions. Introducing low code to the underwriting process can reduce the risk of human error, increase efficiency, and improve the accuracy of underwriting. 

• Fraud Detection: Low-code platforms enable insurance companies to create rule-based systems that can analyze data from multiple sources to identify fraudulent behavior, automatically flag suspicious claims, and provide analytics-based insights for fraud investigators.  

• Compliance Monitoring: Low-code development gives IT teams the ability to rapidly develop and deploy custom-configured compliance monitoring systems. Taking advantage of low-code platforms rule-based systems, insurers can create custom rules based on regulatory requirements, track compliance metrics, and generate reports for auditors and regulators. In doing so, insurance companies can comply with existing and emerging regulations and reduce the risk of fines and penalties.  

• Agent Productivity: Low code for insurance empowers quick creation of new apps and productivity tools that enable agents and brokers to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. From agent and broker portals that provide access to customer information, policy details, and claims data to process automations for data entry, quote generation, and policy issuance, low code enables agents to spend less time on tedious tasks, and more time on selling policies and building relationships. 

With an Advanced Specialization for Low Code Application Development, Hitachi Solutions is uniquely qualified to help insurance companies tap into the full potential of the Power Platform. Contact us today to learn more.  

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