We can’t make the compliance barriers of new product development go away, but Duck Creek’s approach will help everything else about product development go more quickly and smoothly, writes Mike Smart, Sales Director at Duck Creek Technologies in Europe.

Getting new products to market is typically a time-consuming and drawn-out process for insurers. Some of the time the hurdles are formed by compliance barriers, but there are other issues that can put off companies from embarking on the process or slow it down significantly – legacy technology and the need to integrate new pricing algorithms and access new sources of data enrichment being cases in point.

The argument for change has existed for some time, particularly for those insurance companies that have recognised how their legacy systems are inhibiting business development opportunities. Further, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on customers’ expectations, as more young and old people alike have become more used to the convenience of an online-savvy, remote working, home delivery lifestyle.

Many companies continue to seek to perfect, with varying degrees of success, an aesthetically pleasing front-end to their digital presence. However, back-office technical architectures frequently lack the requisite flexibility to support these desired new function-rich customer engagement models. The focus on usage-based products, faster service, self-service, and better customer journey throughout will in many cases push existing systems past breaking point.

At Duck Creek, we recognise that it’s vital to be able to introduce new products quickly; to have the freedom to exploit new and emerging distribution channels; to make rate changes quickly, supporting new pricing models, aligned with usage-based insurance; and to integrate new disparate sources of data from telematics to the Internet of Things – these are now “table stakes.”

Duck Creek’s flexible, low-code architecture and functionally-rich applications tick all the boxes and more. Low code empowers everyone to build the solutions they need, to meet the need at hand.

As a specialist Software-as-a-Service provider, delivering business solutions on demand through the cloud, we’re substantially reducing the ongoing cost of maintaining insurers’ systems environments. We are working with an ever-increasing number of insurers around the word who wish to migrate to this new world and seize the array of new opportunities provided.

And we’ll get to market faster with an agile SaaS platform that automates updates, drives efficiencies, and optimizes core systems, freeing IT to envision the future.