This article is part of a series sponsored by AgentSync.
Another year has passed. How has your organization performed over the past 365 days? 2024 is going to be a tough year for the insurance industry in many ways. The industry and its millions of professionals are facing some pretty significant challenges this year due to thousands of regulatory changes, an increase in fraud and general pressures on the property and casualty insurance industry.
But where there are challenges, there are opportunities. So before you lock 2024 in a box and throw away the key, consider how your organization handles the stress and how you can rethink your distribution strategy to better prepare for 2025.
Conduct year-end insurance operations review
At this time of the year, it is already time to start evaluating performance in 2024. The most successful insurance organizations continuously evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of their strategies to identify areas for improvement. But everyone has to start somewhere, so whether you’ve already mapped out your 2025 plans and clicked through this article to understand your strategy, or the new year is just around the corner and you’re just starting to evaluate your 2024 performance, we’ve got you covered Guarantee provided.
Learn where to start when evaluating your distribution pipeline management strategy, and how optimizing certain areas now can help you succeed in 2025.
First things first: Understand your current strategic position
In order to get where you want to go, you first need to know where you are. As you review your business operations, note any gaps in your current strategy.
When taking a deeper look at your current access strategy, it’s important to understand how you are performing along five key dimensions:
- process automation
- Data quality and integration
- Supervision Compliance and Risk Management
- Scalability
- Operational agility and resilience
Scoring your business in these five areas can help you better understand your organization’s current strengths, as well as strategic areas that could benefit from improvements. Use AgentSync’s free distribution pipeline management assessment to understand how your current strategy stacks up and help you determine your priorities for the new year.
Three major predictions for the insurance industry in 2025
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of predictions for what the insurance industry will look like in 2025, and depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different list of the most important trends. But to save everyone some time, here are three things that came up over and over again in our research:
1. More regulatory changes will test the efficiency of organizational compliance operations.
The world of insurance compliance regulation is constantly changing, so if there’s one thing we can absolutely guarantee the insurance industry will be facing in the coming year, it’s a raft of regulatory updates. As of this writing, AgentSync has tracked 302 changes related to licensing, reservations, CE rules, and more in 2024 alone (all of which can be found in our Compliance Library). This is a new change that insurance organizations need to identify and address every 1.2 days for every producer in their distribution fleet to ensure they are operating in compliance!
Think about how your organization has responded to the changing regulatory environment over the past 365 days. Is compliance difficult, or does it add unnecessary expense to your bottom line? Does it create a serious impediment that prevents new producers from selling? To avoid the same fate next year, organizations with ineffective compliance management practices should consider partnering with vendors that can help them assess and mitigate compliance risks more effectively.
With the right partner, compliance management can evolve from a time-consuming, retrospective cost center to a seamless, fully proactive driver of business growth. Equip your current team to handle regulatory changes in 2025 without hiring additional management assistance, even as you expand your distribution team.
2. The increase in M&A activities will bring new opportunities and challenges
Experts predict that 2025 will be a big year for mergers and acquisitions in the insurance industry. Improving economic conditions mean businesses can expect a more dynamic M&A environment in the year ahead, with digital transformation becoming a key driver of many major deals. Successfully navigating the changing M&A landscape depends heavily on how prepared an organization’s people, processes and data are to respond to change.
If the thought of being involved in a merger or acquisition sends shivers down your spine, you’re not alone. But no matter which side of the deal you’re on, there are steps you can take now to increase the likelihood of a successful transition. That is, starting from the integration capabilities (or lack thereof) of the core systems to initiate change management in the organization.
Remember earlier when you rated your organization’s maturity and agility on these five key dimensions? Look again at the scores for dimension four (scalability) and dimension five (operational agility and resiliency). Are you confident that your current systems can effectively navigate a merger or acquisition without becoming a source of frustration, wasted time and money, and greater data security risks? Does acquiring an agency mean spending time and effort manually introducing new production lines one by one?
If not, now is the time to consider partnering with distribution pipeline management technology that will enable you to quickly and efficiently adapt to new opportunities, such as M&A transactions, through automated workflows to manage sales across multiple LOAs and multiple licensed Bulk transactions between multiple producers.
For a more in-depth look at the latest trends impacting insurance M&A, including tips and best practices for transformation, watch our webinar in partnership with PropertyCasualty360: The Future of Insurance M&A.
3. Organization-wide access to real-time data will give early adopters the upper hand
Entering 2025, the insurance industry will continue to be affected by rapid technological advancement and digital transformation. As insurance organizations continue to move away from outdated producer lifecycle management systems and toward more modern distribution pipeline management solutions (especially those that allow them to integrate technology stacks), industry experts and thought leaders predict that real-time decision support will Gain wider adoption of systems, such as those powered by application programming interfaces (APIs).
Consider the current status of producer and institutional profiles. Do you have high confidence in its accuracy at any given moment? Can teams in your organization surface this data when and where they need it to make more informed business decisions? API improves the quality of your data by synchronizing your existing systems with industry factual sources to ensure your producer and organization data is always up to date and useful.
For example, imagine the benefits of accessing accurate producer data in a commission payment system or appending permissions data to information in a policy administration system. Partnering with a distribution pipeline management solution with API technology at its core can deliver wins ranging from as simple as ensuring 100% compliance on every policy sold to as complex as guiding you into untapped business areas.
Improve your insurance access strategy today to get and stay ahead
If your current approach to distribution pipeline management is taking too much time, costing you too much money, or is otherwise holding you back, it’s time to make a change. Don’t wait until it’s too late to identify and correct any bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your current strategy. Remember, while optimizing your operations early will help you successfully navigate 2025 predictions, it will also put your organization in a better position to respond to any unforeseen challenges and opportunities that may arise next year.
Currently, hundreds of leading insurance organizations are using the AgentSync platform and our team of experts to expand and optimize their distribution networks to ensure future success. To learn more about how AgentSync can unlock your pipeline potential, or for a personalized review of your current pipeline management strategy, speak with our experts today.
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