Why Knowledge Management Is Vital for the Insurance Industry

Whether you sell auto insurance or life insurance, finding and managing shared knowledge quickly is always a priority.

But it's easier said than done.

Insurers offer a vast number of products and services, each with its own underlying complex legal agreement — the insurance policy. So how can buyers and sellers alike be confident in the vast amount of information available to them? By executing a tactical knowledge management process and strategy.

When knowledge isn't available to easily access across an organization, everyone suffers. In the insurance industry, that could mean anything from claims payouts to employee morale to lost business.

Information Overload

The insurance industry is notorious for siloed information and policy documents that change constantly while previous versions remain in force. Employees must be able to navigate the latest policy documents and keep track of previous iterations and revisions.

The volume of documentation creates a challenging experience for frontline staff. That's because this group regularly needs to sift through lengthy documents in real-time to assist customers.

Not surprisingly, this can spell information overload and search fatigue in both new hires and tenured employees.

Knowledge Gap

When experienced team members leave the industry before new hires can be brought up to speed, a serious knowledge gap occurs.

Part of the problem is finding new hires. Deloitte’s 2022 Insurance Industry Outlook reports that 43% of insurance talent respondents struggle to find candidates for open roles. The industry now has to pivot recruitment strategies in order to get Millennial and Gen Z candidates interested in insurance.

Onboarding

This challenge extends to frontline workers and customer support teams. As PwC notes, the problem isn’t necessarily losing candidates to more “exciting” industries. It’s that the industry is often seen as limited in different ways.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported high turnover in the labor market. This includes as many as 75.6 million hires and 47.8 million quits in 2021. An increasing number of insurance employees are “exploring their options” and do not reveal their true reasons for leaving their roles.

With the quick turnaround required to hire and train replacements, there often isn't time to address employee turnover. The lack of access to policy documents and procedures that makes it hard for customer support staff to succeed.

Remote Work

After the Covid-19 pandemic, many employees don’t have any desire to come back to the office at all. This isn’t entirely unwelcome news for employers. Deloitte reports that only 3% of insurance companies foresee a return to full-time in-person employment.

Remote and hybrid work environments present some challenges, such as a lack of day-to-day access to colleagues and managers. Now, new hires have to rely on email and chat rooms, or attempt to look up the answer themselves. When answers cannot be found easily or quickly, companies can expect employee frustration and increased wait times for customers.

Legacy Systems

The pace of change in the industry threatens to strain legacy technology for information discovery, access, and storage which has proven inadequate to meet customer needs.

Today’s consumers and business are used to a Google-like search experience with instant results. But current enterprise search and discovery tools simply aren’t up to the challenge. General knowledge bases aren’t designed with the insurance industry in mind. Insurers need to look for other ways to modernize their workflows.

Potential areas of innovation include artificial intelligence and the blockchain. Accenture reports that 80% of insurance industry executives have plans to use "distributed ledger technology” in at least one department. McKinsey makes the case for building innovative products using an accelerator model.

Customer Satisfaction

Consumers expect the same level of support from insurance companies that they’ve received in other more tech-savvy industries.

Processing times for home insurance claims increased from an average of three days in 2020 to 18 days in 2021. This is largely because digital claims systems weren’t ready for the demand, which resulted in a backlog for human representatives to review.

Frontline insurance workers need to have instant access to critical information and be able to plainly explain complex policies to customers. Although the main purpose of a knowledge management system is to make life easier for employees, it also increases customer satisfaction. The good news is that ProNavigator is designed to eliminate all these problems. We make sure the information that powers your business is at your fingertips.

Make sure to continue on to part two of our Knowledge Management blog series. We'll discuss how insurance companies can leverage modern tools to improve upon knowledge management strategies to gain the competitive advantage.