Original Article Appeared in Business Reporter August 2022
The two companies collaborated to develop the group and employee benefits industry’s first purpose-built core system, FINEOS AdminSuite.
Too many insurance companies are using old-fashioned IT systems. In the past, these firms built their own back-end systems to enroll customers and process claims. They expected them to last decades, and they did. As a result, while in-house server rooms are a relic of the past, many insurance companies are still using outdated legacy systems that, as well as being inefficient and expensive to run, also fail to adequately address cybersecurity and ensure the private transmission of information in the cloud.
Today, there is a proven solution for the group and employee benefits segment of life, accident and health insurance: FINEOS AdminSuite. FINEOS AdminSuite is now backed by the ground-breaking New York Life Group Benefit Solutions case study that explores how the insurer successfully replaced six legacy systems.
A new way of working
Insurance software provider FINEOS saw the need to develop a new way of working to solve the issue of outdated legacy systems. So did the insurance company, which provides $4.1-billion of life, accident and disability insurance for employers, with approximately nine million employees benefitting from these protections. FINEOS has a 30-year history providing software in the life, accident and health insurance market, operating invisibly so that the insurer, employer and the customer can communicate seamlessly on their insurance journey.
The two companies collaborated to develop the group and employee benefits industry’s first purpose-built core system, FINEOS AdminSuite. Designed using industry best practice, the fully cloud-based system supports the insurance journey from quote to claim with components addressing absence, billing, claims, payments, policy, provider, quote, rate and underwriting. FINEOS AdminSuite represents something previously unavailable to the industry: a proven data-driven core admin system that provides end-to-end support for administrative processes and customer service.
Meeting user needs
It was clear that there was a real need for this new way of working. The employee benefits industry is a complex ecosystem: there are insurers, brokers, benefits administrators, HR teams and, of course, individual employees. All have differing requirements and resources that need to be managed.
The insurer was looking to drive business efficiencies throughout the client and customer lifecycle. It needed a full end-to-end administration suite that had robust policy administration at its core and addressed both voluntary and group employee benefits concurrently. It also required a unified service that could link disability and absence management: this would support the insurer’s strategic vision of providing an enhanced, streamlined and customized customer experience. And it was looking for a holistic way to introduce new products such as paid family medical leave to employers and their employees.
With these goals in mind, FINEOS conceived the idea of defining a complete suite, a single core administration solution for all products. The result was a highly integrated system that provided a crucial benefit to all users: a single source of truth. By connecting data from different sources including different products (such as life, accident and disability cover) and different processes (such as purchasing, renewal or claims), users could find all the information they wanted in one place, simply and quickly.
The power of SaaS
The FINEOS Platform provides a complete end-to-end solution to anyone in the employee benefits industry. Because it is “software as a service” (SaaS), it provides many benefits a bespoke system does not.
Costs are reduced because the investment in development is shared by all platform customers; operating costs are lower because system experts manage the software and provide regular upgrades, leaving insurance companies to manage their core business. And data security is supported through functionality such as multi-factor authentication, full data encryption both in process and at rest, and single sign-on. The platform is compliant with security and privacy regulatory requirements including HIPAA and GDPR.
In addition, the FINEOS Platform does not use bulky in-house servers. It is cloud-based, which means lower set-up costs, greater uptime and an ability to access it from anywhere in the world, 24/7.
SaaS means insurance companies are best positioned to leverage technology to drive improvements in their services. With all critical information available in one place, queries can be handled quickly and accurately. This results in fewer inquiries and less time spent chasing information.
Benefits for insurance carriers
FINEOS AdminSuite provides insurance companies with centralized policy administration, integrated claims and leave management, and the capability to manage complex billing and revenue management requirements. This provides a number of important benefits.
There is a considerable uplift in productivity for insurance companies. Less time is spent on administration and, with the reduction in manual work, unnecessary problems such as data transcription errors are avoided. The insurance employee user experience is improved, with frictionless access to end-customer information.
In addition, IT costs are reduced. In the FINEOS case study, six legacy systems were retired, eliminating the associated licensing and maintenance costs.
Importantly, FINEOS AdminSuite also enables insurance companies to provide better customer service, with more accurate query resolution and faster implementation of policy requests. At the same time, insurance customers are given greater flexibility: they can configure benefits administration services to match the business processes of their finance and HR benefit teams, and they can adapt to employee demands and meet changing regulatory requirements.
The end-consumer – the employee – also benefits from FINEOS AdminSuite. Insurance processes are centered around them, rather than their employer, and automation speeds up the routine processes they must step through. The improved end-user experience includes the ability to access customer service across all digital channels and a comprehensive digital self-service facility that is easy to navigate 24/7.
Future-ready employee benefits
FINEOS has developed the employee benefits industry’s one and only purpose-built core administration suite. Embracing the latest digital technology, it enables insurers to adopt a future-ready approach that can meet the challenges of a swiftly changing industry. Its cloud-native foundation delivers the flexibility and service levels that consumers and businesses alike now require from online services.
The suite provides an end-to-end service, from quote to claim. By integrating employee and management data sources from across an organization, it provides a single “source of truth” where an employee’s entire enrollment can be viewed and managed in one place.
FINEOS AdminSuite improves the customer experience for all parties on the insurance journey: the insurer, the employer, and the end-user employee.
As part of the FINEOS Platform, the FINEOS AdminSuite delivers industry-leading capabilities across the core administration of employee insurance including absence management, billing, claims, payments, policy administration, provider management and new business and underwriting. For more information, visit www.FINEOS.com
