Library: Adacta – No-code and low-code platforms in insurance: The future is multi platform

Executive summary :

Low code may be an answer to going digital, but is no panacea  

Insurance CIOs have begun exploring low-code development platforms to reduce their IT backlogs and close the IT skill gap. Low-code platforms can make insurers more agile, competitive, and better suited for the digital world, but none is a panacea. Rather, it is more about a general approach to IT and how modern digital insurance platforms that feature insurance-specific data models, products and process logic can coexist with horizontal low-code platforms. Only a strategic end-to-end approach managed by IT can provide insurance companies with the capability to empower the business technologists to build new products and processes with writing minimal code.

The market demands agility and innovation

The insurance industry has never been synonymous with agility, but times are changing and consumers today expect an immediate response. They demand digital experiences whenever and wherever they want them. They require more suitable risk coverage. However, a study by Forrester has found that despite the constant emergence of new risks, only 50% of them are covered by suitable insurance offerings.

The result is a growing IT backlog.

In the post-COVID digital world, the role of technology is not only to make the process more efficient but also to enable Innovation.

In an era when everything seems to be changing at breakneck speed, traditional approaches to operating technology may hurt insurers’ bottom lines. According to Gartner, 65% of all enterprise applications will be built using low-code technologies by 2024.

Insurers are playing catch-up

While the problem of conflicting priorities between keeping the systems running and innovating is nothing new for IT, it continues to grow. Market success depends on highly skilled technologists, yet the global IT sector suffers from an unprecedented skill shortage. Rather than driving Innovation and change, insurers are playing catch-up.

Gartner’s research suggests that new products and improved operational agility were the top priorities for insurance IT in 2021.

Insurers have difficulty keeping up, especially when operating with legacy systems and core systems that do not support a high level of self-sufficiency. According to Gartner (NOTE: “Why Insurance Product Leaders Must Reevaluate Their System Configuration Capabilities” available only to Gartner clients), insurers strive to achieve a level of self-sufficiency that would allow them to launch new products on their own. However, software solutions (such as core systems and low-code/no-code platforms) claiming to be fit for purpose are often more hype than reality.

The insurance citizen developer

To bridge these gaps, many insurers have started exploring low-code platforms to strengthen their operational capabilities.

The goal is twofold. To increase the efficiency of software professionals and ¸empower business and business technology users (citizen developers) to create or modify business applications (while remaining under IT governance). This trend is also seen by analysts and consulting companies evaluating low-code platform use cases to advise the insurers on the direction and trends. Here are two example reports by Celent and Novarica.

The citizen developer approach allows IT to hand off some critical tasks to the business side. A cleared backlog allows them to shift their focus to Innovation.

Furthermore, the approach allows business users to become active self-driven implementers (rather than adding to the already vast IT backlog). Low code empowers them to implement what the business needs instead of waiting for IT.

Our experience confirms that insurers can rely more on business users in areas traditionally associated with IT. With the right tools, business users can take on a large part of insurance product and process design independently and without active support from IT.

Our clients’ business users also use AdInsure Studio. This confirms that insurers can empower business users with easy-to-use tools in areas that traditionally require lots of IT effort. Insurance product design and configuration and premium testing is an example of such an area that can be performed within AdInsure Studio by business users independently and without IT’s active support.

What is low code development?

The low-code paradigm is a software development methodology that requires minimal coding. As such, it gained popularity among developers who wanted to get things done quickly. It then moved from developers with technical knowledge to non-developers. The shortage of developers makes it even more important and strategic today.

Modern low code platforms enable both professionals and non-professionals to create Software tailored to their organizations’ specific requirements. Low-code platforms come with tools that use drag-and-drop interfaces instead of programming languages so non-professional developers can build business apps with as little coding as possible.

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