If you’re trying to grow your insurance company, you have a lot on your plate. You need to decide which markets and products to expand into, which technologies to invest in and how to improve your loss ratio. Unfortunately, it’s hard to focus on any of this when premium processing is eating up all of your time.
You might be thinking that there’s got to be a better way – and you’re right. By outsourcing some or all of your premium processing, you can get these routine tasks off your plate so you can focus on bigger and better things.
Payment Processing: A Necessary but Time-Consuming Task
Let’s say you’re an insurance startup receiving about 1,000 premium checks per month. Even if everything goes smoothly, processing those checks is still going to take a lot of time – and let’s face it, things don’t always go smoothly. Some of the payments might not match up to your records, so your team is going to need to spend even longer figuring out what went wrong. And don’t forget about agent commissions, return premium checks and claim checks. That’s going to take up even more time.
Insurance companies handle a lot of financial transactions, and each of these transactions needs to be managed accurately to ensure policyholder satisfaction and regulatory compliance. It’s important work, but it can also be a distraction from all the other tasks you need to do.
Of course, you can always try to hire on more staff. That means more overhead, though, as well as the physical space needed for the workers and their equipment. If you’re a company that’s trying to grow, this might not be where you want to focus your investments. It can be even harder when you’re not sure how fast you’re going to grow or what your volume will be from one month to the next.
Most Insurers Haven’t Achieved Full Digital Yet
The insurance industry’s digital transformation promises to eliminate many of the hassles associated with paper premium check processing, but the industry hasn’t reached total digitization yet. Paper checks and documents are still used, at least some of the time. Sometimes, this might be due to customer preference. Other times, it might be due to proof of mail requirements for certain notifications. Either way, the result is that insurers are dealing with a hybrid of paper and digital channels, and that can make processes even more complicated.
This is true even for new, tech-forward startups like FIGO. Most of the pet insurance company’s communications were electronic, and FIGO didn’t want to have to invest in physical mail equipment for the small number of paper communications. Handling these documents in-house simply didn’t make sense – but they still needed to get done. The simple task of printing and mailing claims checks was eating up hours of time each day. They needed to get these tasks off their desks and off their plate, so they turned to Covenir as their outsourcing partner for print and mail.
Premium Services Provide the Solutions You Need
Think about all the time your team spends sorting mail, opening letters and applying the payment. If you could get these tasks off your plate, you could focus on mission-critical items to fuel growth – without worrying about how you’re going to manage the extra volume once you achieve that growth.
Instead of having your team process premium payments and other inbound mail, you can take advantage of virtual mailroom services to have your mail digitized and your payments posted directly to your software. Covenir’s back-office support can also resolve payment exceptions, provide reconciliations and even disburse return premium, claim and commission checks. You can pick and choose the services that meet your needs, and if your needs change, you pick and choose a new array of services.
These services are ideal for insurance companies that need premium processing support and print and mail services. Startup mortgage carriers and other companies in the financial services industry may also benefit from this back-office support.
Are you ready to see how premium processing services can help your company grow? Learn more.