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OutSystems: Transforming Insurance through Low-Code Application Development

The insurance industry is at a digital crossroads. Customers and policyholders expect insurers to deliver an excellent user experience and will go elsewhere if they don’t get it. There is pressure to grow market share while decreasing the costs of underwriting and claims handling. These challenges, coupled with the need to modernize legacy IT systems, are having a significant impact on staying competitive. Low-code platforms enable rapid delivery of business applications with minimal hand-coding and upfront investment in setup, training, and deployment. Practically speaking, low-code allows using visual modeling and design to develop applications up to ten times faster than traditional coding and make changes to applications in hours instead of weeks. Carriers can quickly build new feature-rich solutions—agent portals, claims, underwriting applications, customer quoting tools, and more—in just weeks.

Based in Atlanta, GA, OutSystems provides the only solution that combines the power of low-code development with advanced mobile capabilities, enabling visual development of entire application portfolios that easily integrate with existing systems. OutSystems is a complete, full-cycle rapid application development platform that simplifies every stage of the app development and delivery process. Because of its visual modeling and automated, one-click deployment approach to application delivery, developers and teams can provide apps the business requires with speed to market.

The OutSystems platform has a wide array of applications in insurance. Insurers can rapidly build next-generation agent portals, customer experience applications, zero-touch quoting tools, and underwriting and claims solutions ten times faster than with traditional development methods. OutSystems provides tools for digitalizing and optimizing operations. By connecting disparate systems of data, applying data standards, and automating manual processes, users can speed up processing times, thereby reducing support costs.

From existing commercial-off-the-shelf solutions to aging legacy systems, OutSystems makes it easy to integrate any external enterprise system, database, or custom app. For legacy modernization, teams have the option to re-platform completely, or to use OutSystems as a digital front-end wrapper around existing legacy systems. To reduce the risk of failure, migration can be done in phases using a modular approach. An open API framework allows IT organizations to consolidate multiple core systems and data sources, improving data transparency, and allowing employees to respond more quickly to customer needs.

But it is not just responding quickly to customer needs that is essential within today’s markets. Digital customer experience as a whole also plays a critical role within the onboarding and retention of clients. In fact, according to Forrester, “49 percent of insurance business technology decision-makers cite Customer Experience as their top priority for 2019.” The transformative OutSystems platform allows an enterprise to rapidly deliver next-generation digital engagement solutions across mobile, chatbot, and web to agents, brokers, and customers. Clients can use pre-built templates and patterns to build pixel-perfect experiences that perform great on any device to delight users. This enables customers to engage on their terms at the right time and in the right place, to vastly increase the ability to up-sell and cross-sell, as well as deliver a seamless user experience. Along with creating new sources of revenue and rising average policies per customer, these innovations can dramatically improve agent share of wallet and customer satisfaction scores.

Our goal is to help insurance companies build innovative offerings to beat their increasingly-threatening insuretech competition. To do that, we always monitor the market for technology trends and align our roadmap with the needs of our customers, as well as those trends

With an ecosystem spanning all major geographies globally, OutSystems partners can assist customers in finding the best solution possible and implement it, utilizing their extensive knowledge of the platform. After onboarding, customers are able to go live with their first application, typically within six to eight weeks. The company also offers training classes and courses to get certified on its platform. Through its customer support and online forum, clients get quick responses to their queries.

Staying ahead of technology trends from the market and “insuretech” disruptors is critical. “Our goal is to help insurance companies build innovative offerings to beat their increasingly-threatening insuretech competition. To do that, we always monitor the market for technology trends and align our roadmap with the needs of our customers, as well as those trends,” says Ariel Russo, Product Marketing Manager at OutSystems.

One OutSystems customer, Liberty Seguros, had a network of more than 3,000 independent brokers and agents who were selling insurance policies throughout Portugal. Faced with a declining portfolio due to lack of agent satisfaction, a subpar user experience, and IT backlog of two years, they turned to OutSystems for help. Liberty Seguros adopted the OutSystems platform for application delivery and built web and mobile applications for agents, brokers, and customers. They created their claims management application, an underwriting workbench, as well as a solution for administering policies. Reusing components and services built for first application resulted in exponentially decreasing lead time to value. Their average time to market for one application is four weeks, and they were able to eliminate shadow IT and reduce maintenance expenditures. Liberty Seguros was able to increase policy growth by 274 percent by creating something as simple as an agent broker application.

OutSystems has been named a Leader in the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Multiexperience Development Platforms multiple times. Named a Top Cloud Employer by Forbes four years in a row, OutSystems has offices worldwide. The firm pioneered the low-code space and is currently focused on leveraging partners’ domain expertise and choosing the right technology alliance partners. Recently at its annual user conference, OutSystems announced a partnership with Workato to help deliver increased automation around integration. Shortly, OutSystems aims to grow and establish itself with a more substantial presence. “We see a real opportunity for low-code to drive digital transformation within insurance. The fact that it’s faster and often less expensive than traditional development is generating a lot of interest,” concludes Russo.