Why You Should Upgrade to a Cloud-based, SaaS Insurance Platform

Cloud technology is quickly transforming the fintech and insurtech space, making technology and features that were only accessible to large companies, now available to small-medium ones too.

Here are five reasons that make a cloud-based, SaaS solution something for you to consider:

1. Agility

One of the most significant advantages in today's post-COVID environment is agility. Everyone in your insurance community from clients, brokers, and your core backend users can access the systems they need from anywhere they may be, in real-time, quickly and cost-effectively.

With a traditional, client/server environment, a complicated setup of virtual private networks (or remote terminals) is needed to access core backend systems. State-of-the-art features like customer-facing web experiences, online quoting, client/broker portals, or mobile apps are costly to create and connect to your backend systems in real-time. Cloud-based systems can allow for these features (and more) by default. These more configurable models create a more productive team and save both time and money.

2. Quick Deployment and Cost-Effective

Smaller companies have limited resources and staff, so using an insurance platform hosted in the cloud allows them to share these resources more effectively. The core solutions are maintained by your SaaS (Software as a Service) provider and include regular updates and new features.

With traditional enterprise systems, the upgrade path is often slow and arduous, any new feature that you might require can involve expensive processes and less than ideal speeds to adapt to market changes.

The cost of SaaS software is often based on a subscription model with the price of the software paid for over an extended period with a smaller upfront cost. This is why SaaS is so disruptive: the per-user cost for application and database licenses is drastically reduced, providing companies the ability to invest in digital transformation projects without historically expensive capital expenditure. In many cases, the subscription models allow for “pay as you grow”, which means even lower upfront costs for small companies which only increase as the company expands their customer base and revenue.

3. Increased Productivity and Efficiency

Having your insurance software in the cloud allows your staff to access your full platform from wherever they are using whatever devices they may have with them or turn to digital to carry out self-service operations such as checking the status of their claim 24/7 over a wide range of devices

4. Scalability

As your company grows, so can your solution(s). You may start with essential features, and as your organisation expands, you can either self-implement or use consulting services to increase the full range of features that are available. Your company is thus able to keep at the cutting edge with little investment and reach markets or automate processes to stay ahead of the competition.

Cloud-based systems are managed by the application development company so you might need to pay for this storage, but you do not need to worry about disk space, backups, offsite backups, backup rotations or server upgrades. Often, all you need is a device with a browser.

Purchasing enterprise-level systems or building a complete and flexible system can cost millions, yet for a minimal investment with cloud-based or SaaS-based software, you can have the best of breed available without this massive overhead.

5. Highly Configurable and Connected

As SaaS software is often designed to be multi-tenant with all clients using the same code base, the system usually has a high amount of configuration to be able to suit each company’s individual needs. In the cloud, these updates happen regularly, generally with no "downtime". The attitude of the SaaS-based solution is constant development and regular releases, so often a company will have access to new features as part of their support and maintenance agreement with no need to set up or pay for consulting to configure new features.

The configuration capability allows the company to set up the system to suit its own needs with little or no development required which again makes a SaaS-based solution more economical.