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Insurance companies are subject to massive public criticism due to operational shortcomings such as long processing times and a large backlog. There is a risk of losing the trust of customers and intermediaries. This situation is the result of the following mutually reinforcing effects:
Customers expect fast and high-quality processing of their requests, and consumer protection and regulatory authorities are increasingly paying attention to this aspect, too. Overworked employees and desperate intermediaries underline the need to find a way out of the backlog situation.
The insurance industry is currently running the risk of permanently losing the trust of customers and sales partners due to continuous overload of resources in the operations units.
Dieter Kipp, Partner
In order to obtain a consistently high level of quality and efficiency in their operations units, insurers need to ensure the interplay of the three levers of business development, productivity and staffing levels. This requires …
The business development of insurance companies forms the basis for projecting the workload. The expected amount of work can only be estimated by regularly analyzing the development of the number of contracts and business transactions. To enable sound planning, insurers must therefore ask themselves some fundamental questions:
Up to now, medium-term capacity requirement calculations have often been based on across-the-board increases in productivity. However, this is not sufficient for sound planning and frequently leads to an illusion of productivity that is not achieved in reality. It is therefore essential for insurers to identify specific measures for optimizing the main processes. This is the only way to derive realistic productivity effects. In addition, this groundwork also enables improved tracking of productivity development.
Filling vacancies with qualified personnel is becoming increasingly difficult. Demographic change is seriously affecting the industry. By 2030, insurance companies will lose over 30% of their workforce due to employees reaching retirement age. Without clear and long-term personnel planning, insurance companies will face the risk of critical workforce gaps, which will significantly impair the operations units’ performance.
Medium-term projections of business and productivity development allow reliable derivations of required capacities. In order to specify realistic recruitment requirements, the onboarding and training period of new employees and the capacity of experienced employees for conducting the training must also be taken into account.
According to our market perception, there is a glaring gap, particularly in the overall view of the dimensions of business and productivity development as well as personnel planning. As the example scenario shows, owing to insufficient productivity increases and a declining workforce, the rising number of business transactions can no longer be processed in the foreseeable future. The operational overload in insurance companies is already posing a serious threat to their competitiveness and reputation, and there is no sign of any relief from these external influences in the near future.
The balance between business development, productivity and staffing levels is the key to successfully overcoming these challenges and puts management back in a proactive position – out of the backlog situation and criticism. zeb has developed an approach that ensures effective coordination of the major levers and enables short-, medium- and long-term control – and thus a holistic perspective.
