How The Insurance Industry Has Adapted To Consumer Demands
From multiple comparison sites, intuitive email campaigns, and high-performing apps, it’s fair to say insurance companies across the UK have been quick to recognise and respond to their consumers’ demands, providing 24/7 lines of communications via social media and other digital platforms. As one of the most seemingly tech-focused industries, the insurance sector may appear to be a digitally-led service provider with a heavy online presence, which behind the scenes tells a different story. As many insurers are older, established businesses, much of their internal IT systems have been left outdated. Responding to the increasing demands from customers to become a largely online service provider, insurers have adapted from the more traditional business model of relying on customer loyalty and repeat custom to have a strong digital presence without updating their technologies internally. Offering outwardly dynamic customer service without focusing on being dynamic internally, insurance companies have unknowingly created their technology issues with security, data handling, and even storage all needing to be reviewed. Neglecting the core internal businesses often leads to further financial and data breach implications, creating the need for a comprehensive IT strategy to help update their technologies.Data Protection and IT Security
With the introduction of dynamic apps and high-performing websites, data protection and cybersecurity have become an imperative part of the insurance business, but often the internal services supporting these aren’t reviewed or even updated leading to security breaches and data protection issues. Having a digitally-led approach is great and works well when companies adopt and apply it to their internal infrastructure, but often the focus remains on consumers, and supporting IT becomes neglected. As more customers impart personal information with insurance providers, the more data protection is legally required to be in place to ensure that information is handled and stored securely. Cybersecurity is a vital part of almost all industries including insurance but implementing the right infrastructure behind the scenes to support these safely is often left last. Having a solid IT support provider behind the scenes to handle both data protection for customers and internal staff is imperative to running a successful business but is typically last on the to-do list for large companies. With more focus on security breaches now more than ever, insurers now have a legal requirement to ensure their IT security meets the minimum requirements to host all acquired data securely.The Impact of Effective IT On The Insurance Sector
Larger corporations are often slower moving when it comes to updating or changing their infrastructure, as the business has become far more complex over time. This often means investing in technology is a lengthy and painful process. Putting in place an effective IT strategy becomes business-critical to prevent avoidable issues such as data breaches that have huge financial implications. Having high-performing IT infrastructure in place is a critically important part of a customer-service company such as an insurance provider, as the sensitive nature of data protection requires best practices for internal processes. Having slow-performing, outdated technology behind the scenes impacts the business on many levels from productivity, to avoidable financial costs and in the worst cases leads to data protection breaches. The impact of having an effective IT solution in place for any insurance company is far greater than simply making do with a current system that can’t keep up. As insurance becomes one of the better-evolved industries to meet growing customer demands in a digital age, companies have failed to update or invest in their technology, leaving them prone to costly mistakes. Investing in effective and proactive IT support not only helps to future-proof a company and it’s infrastructure but helps with efficiency and avoids any costly mistakes.