In recent years, customer-centricity, flexibility, and speed are becoming necessities in insurance product development. It is driven by the need to meet growing customer expectations in this ever-changing world. As the bar rises, it is no longer sufficient to remain locked into traditional product development capabilities. Thereby, insurers must substantially modernize their core product development processes to compete and keep up with new market demands.
Hindrance to Progress
Although offering exceptional customer experience is pervasive throughout the industry, insurance companies are still lagging behind in modernizing the product development pipeline and processes. In many cases, this is due to the constraints of legacy IT systems. Insurers often shy away from adopting new technologies because of the uncertainty to sync with their legacy backend systems that are too static. Furthermore, the cost and time to develop their own product development solution are tremendous and therefore unrealistic.
No-Code Product Development
To counter the problem, a No-Code product development concept is on the rise. It enables layman users to create a complete insurance product through the use of drag-and-drop interfaces. By using visual models to replace the coding complexity, users can create new insurance products rapidly and at a much lower cost without relying on IT resources.
Advantages of No-Code
The demand for No-Code applications in the insurance industry increased tremendously in the last few years, because of the many benefits, which will be highlighted in the next paragraphs.
Easy Access for Non-Developers
To develop a new insurance product digitally, insurers would need to rely on professional developers who are skilled in programming. However, many small businesses and startups don’t usually have the budget and time to hire developers. Therefore, a No-Code application is beneficial as nearly everyone in the insurance organization can design and create products through drag and drop features. With a simple user interface and the No-Code capabilities, the user is capable of setting up sales journeys, risks, formulas, coverages, etc. without coding.
Short Time to Market
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, speed is key for insurance companies nowadays to stay relevant and competitive. A No-Code application enables the product creation team to set up coverage, formulas, and risks of insurance products in a matter of hours, instead of weeks. Moreover, it’s especially helpful during the idea validation of new insurance products. It reduces the feedback loops between the IT team and the product creation team to make changes to the insurance product. As such, the ability to quickly iterate and learn might be one of the most powerful levers to the success of new insurance products offering.
Cost Savings
Insurers no longer need to invest in new IT projects for every new insurance product development. No-Code application drastically reduces the total cost of development, by decreasing efforts, time, and resources. Furthermore, it is not a cost-effective way to hire full-time developers that might be expensive, inexperienced, or unskilled to develop applications on an as-needed basis. As such, it enables insurers to lower their financial burden on expanding their IT teams while keeping up with the demand for product development. As the cost of development is comparatively less with No-Code applications, insurers can allocate capital to try, test, and pursue different digitization initiatives.
Greater Product Agility
With traditional coding, it is difficult for developers to change a feature or functionality quickly, and it may even require substantial downtime to implement the changes. On the other hand, No-Code product development is easily changeable and only requires a new logic. That change can be applied in as little as a few hours by anybody. The simplification enables insurance products to become agile and easily adapted to the ever-changing customer demands.
No-Risk of Shadow IT
Shadow IT is one of the most worrying problems for insurance companies of all sizes. It refers to the IT systems that are managed by a department or individual without the knowledge of the IT department. As a No-Code application is centrally managed by the IT team, it can prevent issues in cybersecurity, compliance, and regulations from happening. Therefore, a No-Code application enables insurers to develop insurance products easily and safely in one single platform.
Choosing The Right No-Code Approach
While deciding on the right No-Code product development application, the primary requirement is a thorough understanding of the features and functionalities that the solution providers can offer. Here are some of the important points to keep in mind.
- Availability of an intuitive drag and drop interface.
- Availability of product templates.
- Availability of a testing environment.
- Support and training for product configuration.
- Stability and security of the solution.
The rise of No-Code product development is a result of various advantages like better working efficiencies, shorter time to market, decreased cost, better product agility, and solid IT governance. Although No-Code might not be the solution to every kind of development challenge, it is proving that several areas in the value chain can be simplified. With a No-Code product development application, insurance companies can now launch new insurance products at a much cost-effective and faster pace.
i2go Product Configurator
i2go product configurator is a No-Code product development application that enables insurers to easily and quickly develop new products without relying on an IT team. If you are interested to learn more, visit our page to schedule a demo.
