The Benefits of Low-code Development
The wealth management field is evolving in many ways, and a firm’s mobile experience may be one of its most pressing considerations right now. To millennials and Gen Xers, a financial firm is only as good as its app.
The best low-code development platforms offer exactly what smaller and regional firms need to keep up, but finding the best platform can seem daunting. Keep these five considerations in mind as you evaluate platforms to ensure that you give your firm the ability to keep evolving with your users.
Let’s face it: insurance hasn’t been the most agile of industries. Yet for a long time, that approach worked. Customers knew exactly what to expect when they called their local agent to get the latest pricing on their car or life insurance.
But as the adage goes, times change. Today’s customers are experts on the technology at their fingertips every day, and it can be hard for companies to keep up, especially with legacy systems. As soon as you’ve made one needed update, you’re behind the curve again. Rather than driving innovation and change in your industry, you’re playing catch-up.
In a world of constant disruption, IT operating the old-fashioned way can end up hurting your business. Low-code development can help you move beyond legacy systems and give you the agility you need to stay ahead of the curve.
Customers Are Setting the Pace
A recent McKinsey survey that looked across service industries, including car and health insurance, found that “the quality and availability of digital interactions have a significant impact on customer satisfaction.” To continue to reach customers and move at the speed that they demand, many insurance companies are pivoting to an approach that puts a premium on flexibility.
These companies, especially new ones, are looking to tech brands as their models and are planning their strategies accordingly, developing tools and systems designed to keep up with what consumers want. This includes improved shopping experiences and tools that get customers the information they need quickly and easily.
2019 research by Accenture on consumer trends in banking and insurance drives this idea home. The study found that consumers are looking for integrated solutions that provide personalized information—for example, they want a home insurance provider that also offers bundles for other types of policies, customized guidance based on their financial data, and special perks such as fast-track processing. To get that sort of service, they’re willing to share more personal information with their insurance companies.
Appealing to customers who are primed to operate in a digital-first world—especially millennials and Zoomers—means you have to continually be on the lookout for new ways to service their needs and anticipate coming trends. This is the kind of insight that can be used to quickly create apps and tools that directly appeal to these users, continuously pivoting to the next big thing and improving and integrating systems without the lag time or the need to start from scratch.
Out with the Clunky, in with the Quick
There’s no doubt your organization is feeling the pressure right now: you’ve got to walk the tightrope of growing your written premium, outshining your competition, and meeting your customers’ needs in a face-paced environment.
Yet many insurance brands are still living in a legacy enterprise system world where any changes or updates need to go through layers of approvals and then over to IT for implementation in multiple systems. That process comes at a cost, both in time and in money. By the time setup, testing, and rollout are done, there’s a good chance you’re already behind the curve and customers have moved on to the latest tool.
And clunky legacy systems don’t just affect your customers—your employees can feel the pain, too. When brokers and agents are spending time on administrative work and data entry instead of providing excellent customer service, that’s a loss for your business and a potential reason for customers to head out the door.
Collaborating on a New Approach
For the insurance industry, low-code development can provide an easy way to build out an idea. Because it opens up technology to those without a coding background and simplifies tasks that a skilled developer performs, low-code is a great way to help democratize the way systems and tools get created and deployed—often in just a few weeks.
Working collaboratively, your teams can bring their individual knowledge and areas of expertise together through an IT-approved interface to create an app that personalizes bundled insurance offerings to current customers, for example, or develop a new back-end file management system to speed up claims processing. Once you remove the silo between departments and make it simpler to send products to market, it’s easy to scale. This allows you to stay at the ready and create new systems and tools that evolve with your customers.
The consumer serves as a collaborator here, too. With the data you have on the customers, you can see what product lines and services they’re most interested in and plan services around those. The speed of low-code development also means you can potentially create a much more personalized end-user experience that allows you to seamlessly update and adjust what’s on offer.
The carriers that can innovate and quickly deploy new tools and ideas are going to come out on top. In order to stand out against the competition and attract new business, you need to find a way to create solutions that your customers love. Low-code development is a great place to start.