COVID-19, DIGITAL AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY’S IMPACT ON P&C BPO

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially hard on P&C insurers. Along with a large number of natural disasters and severe weather events which can be difficult financially in any year, they also had to deal with policy lapses and high-value business interruption claims. As insurers struggled to maintain business operations that changed dramatically, customers expected uninterrupted service because they received this from places like Amazon. They are asking questions like “Why can’t I have self-service options and touchless claims?” These internal and external pressures are driving P&C insurers to examine their business and operating models for opportunities to increase their use of digital tools and new technologies. To get there, they may outsource part of their operations

BPO is a segment of outsourcing which consists of subcontracting the business processes of an organization to a third party vendor that has expertise in the domain. Insurance BPO service providers support insurers by providing outsourcing services for the insurance value chain including product development, marketing, policy administration and servicing, and claims management. Other services that help the enterprise or policyholder may also be outsourced. Outsourcing helps insurance companies increase operational efficiency, concentrate on their core competencies, reduce time to market, obtain access to fresh talent and experience along with latest technologies, and build an organization with an economical cost structure.

This report is designed to provide some context for discussion of the global P&C insurance business process outsourcing (BPO) market by analyzing the current uses of BPO for core insurance services based on input from the companies providing services. To gauge the state of insurance BPO across the globe, Celent invited 270 firms—all of which offer BPO and other services to insurers—to participate in a survey. Data was received on 643 deals from 16 vendors across life and P&C insurance. This report will concentrate on the P&C insurance deals