Hurricane season is here, and the insurance industry is going into it with a staffing problem that it can't afford to ignore. Just as the U.S. enters catastrophe season, insurers' ability to staff critical administrative roles like claims adjusters, data analysts and underwriters is running thin.
When storm claims surge and response times slow due to a lack of adequate administrative support, insurance operations may find themselves facing a decrease in service quality, a raft of frustrated policyholders, and potentially even legal exposure and diminished profitability.
Here's what insurance operations are up against and how to get ahead of it before it's too late.
Shrinking workforce, rising regulatory scrutiny, extreme unpredictability
Even when insurance operations do find local talent, the workers may not stay around for long.
As vacancies persist, remaining employees absorb heavier workloads, increasing the risk of burnout and turnover. Operations are then forced to devote more time to recruiting and training replacements instead of improving performance. Until they can fill the gap, back-office teams may struggle with claims processing delays, slower payouts and other challenges. Our estimates indicate the insurance industry loses $3.6 billion each year from inefficiencies that come in the wake of administrative turnover and understaffed back offices.
These challenges are compounded by rising regulatory scrutiny relative to evolving data privacy mandates and claims processing guidelines; extreme weather events, which increase claims volume unpredictability; and customer expectations for real-time updates and digital service.
Remote Talent: Ready to fill the gap
These costly business challenges and frustrations have made it clear that
Insurers can break the cycle by expanding their use of global talent, strengthening compliance training and treating administrative support as a strategic capability vs. a back-office expense.
While industry research has highlighted local talent's limited interest in administrative positions in the insurance sector, global talent is actively seeking long-term insurance careers. Global talent is also more interested in and confident about compliance, which is critical to insurance operations, whose workflows involve handling protected personal data, recording financial transactions and other processes for which compliance and data security are crucial.
Our research indicates just 22% of U.S. administrative job seekers are confident navigating insurance-specific compliance frameworks. The same research reveals nearly half (44%) of global survey respondents are familiar with frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA or SOC 2, and more than 69% would be willing to complete certification training within 2-6 weeks if needed. And now insurers can access platforms providing access to a pipeline of remote administrative talent trained in GDPR, HIPAA and SOC 2 workflows and eager to earn certifications.
With global administrative teams that are compliance-ready and digitally-enabled, insurance operations can reduce their backlogs, automate claims intake, alleviate the pressure on existing staff, and generally drive better and faster customer experiences and business results.
That's more important than ever in our increasingly unpredictable world.
