Insurance Business Process Outsourcing

"Enhancing the business process while reducing the cost"

As insurers continue to struggle with management's mandate to become more efficient in the present economic situation, there is a renewed focus on BPO. Insurers are becoming increasingly aware that their ability to focus on their core competencies will be key to success in an increasingly tight and competitive field. By outsourcing non-core operations, insurers can focus on what they might consider most strategic that is their target market and customers.

Kumaran BPO has developed domain expertise by hiring industry experts and robust project execution. Our domain consulting group consists of thought leaders with extensive industry experience.

Some of business challenges in the traditional business operations are:

• Inflexible business operating models that are unable to react rapidly or cost-effectively to competitive change
• Too many fixed costs tied into non-core operations
• Distraction in business growth due to complex operation management
• Competitive pressure to reduce operating costs
• Scarcity of resource
• Inefficient business operations

Kumaran's P&C BPO practices cover all parts of the servicing life cycle, from writing new business to plan administration, agency administration, compensation, billing, customer support, regulatory reporting, and more.

Kumaran's P&C Insurance BPO services include:

New Business

• Claims and policy registrations
• Covering application data entry
• Application screening
• Case preparation

Billing

• Focusing on reconciliation across billing-remittance
• Invoice and cash
• Related areas in institutional and individual lines

Customer Support

• Covering address
• Beneficiary changes
• Free look cancellations
• Loan interest calculations
• Policy tax status
• Conversion options
• Scheduled loan repayment quote and other processes

Administration (Processing)

• Covering lapse
• Premium
• Reinstatements
• Joint last survivor
• Dividend
• Full and partial surrenders
• Rider
• Remittance

Reference Data Management

• Covering static data maintenance
• Global reference data
• Statement return analysis

Claims Servicing

• Covering data entry
• Processing
• Confirmation of payout
• Claims status calls
• Benefit payments

Agency Management

• Covering commission processing
• Customer support

Regulatory Reporting

• Covering compilation of data into formats for review and dispatch by the client

Our Approach and Methodology

Phase	Activities	Benefits
Assess/develop outsourcing approach	Identify sourcing options	Integrated approach to outsourcing
	Define outsourcing strategy and business case	Global and local capability and knowledge
Outsourcing preparation	Define future operating model	Robust and complete approach to help develop the right solution
	Develop project plan
Outsourcing selection	Structure selection process	Support tools and methods based on best practice and market knowledge
	Agree on performance objectives, request for information and request for proposals
Transition management	Formulate risk, communications and project plans	Effective risk management approaches
	Manage change
	Negotiate service level agreements and contracts
Delivery management	Manage service level agreements	Risk management and service level assurance
	Realize benefits
	Assess risks and controls
Service evolution	Plan exit, transition or in-source	Effective support through re-negotiation, transition or exit
	Negotiate new contracts
	Improve process performance

Some of the Key Benefits of Process outsourcing are:

Free Your Resources and Work On Your Strategy

An important aspect of business process outsourcing is its ability to free corporate executives from some of their day-to-day process management responsibilities like claims, policy, and agent management. Traditionally, insurance executives spend 80 percent of their time managing details, and only 20 percent on strategy. Once a process is successfully outsourced, the ratio can be reversed. Executives get more control over their most valuable resource: time. Time to explore new revenue streams, time to accelerate other projects, and time to focus on their customers.

Improve Processes - Save Money

Insurance companies that outsource claims and policy processes are often able to reengineer those processes and capture new efficiencies. Then they can reallocate resources to other important projects and leverage their investment in technology. For example, processes that are handled in a shared production environment for multiple companies save everyone money. In most cases, high-caliber subject-matter experts are brought in to design and manage these processes, bringing with them best practices, innovation, and years of experience that most companies don't have access to or can't afford on their own.

Increase Your Capabilities

With this expertise often comes increased capability. In addition to doing things more efficiently, you can expand your ability to deliver new insurance products and services to your customers. Then there are the factors of scalability and scope. Insurance companies that want to grow internationally must continuously invest in infrastructure and find talent around the world.

Alliances: Our alliances in the BPO space brings in the best of breed techno-functional consultants to address business challenges through process optimization and thought leadership.

To explore the benefits of Kumaran Insurance BPO services contact Kumaran Systems at insurance@kumaran.com