How no-code platforms help insurers digitise data

Insurers must prioritise speed and efficiency to remain relevant in today’s digital economy. And if they are still grappling with legacy systems and relying on manual processing, they need to find an easy way to digitalise their businesses. One solution is no-code platforms, which are an increasingly popular way to modernise without the challenge of complex implementations.

Understanding no-code

“No-code is a software development approach that achieves the same things as coding, but much faster,” explains Eran Shirazi, the co-founder and CTO of EasySend. “By going digital, you’ll streamline customer data intake and automate your enterprise workflow. No-code development platforms allow you to create application software via graphical user interfaces instead of traditional computer programming.” 

In simple terms, no-code separates programming language and syntax from logic and instead uses a visual approach for software development. It is particularly attractive to insurers because no-code can easily build quote journeys, documents, email templates, rates and other key parts of the insurance mix. As a result, all the essential workflows and processes benefit.

Few, if any, programming skills are required to build applications, and the development process is very fast. Shirazi says it enables anyone with the right business knowledge and focus to build applications, such as forms and websites, and create diverse content. It is also much easier to maintain, he adds, and is capable of building an entire internal application ecosystem.

Shirazi says that EasySend realised there had to be a better approach than coding hundreds of forms for financial and insurance institutions. “We built an engine to mark the fields on PDFs instead of coding annotations,” he says. “This made a huge impact on our workflow, so we went further and built a drag-and-drop platform that didn’t require any code.”

No-code in action

According to Shirazi, no-code is ideal for customer-facing builds. “For instance, you might want your insurance customers to be able to submit claims through a website or an app. You would use drag-and-drop components that are tailored to your needs, and everything is composed in an area that’s sometimes referred to as a ‘canvas’. You would combine buttons, text inputs, checkboxes, and so on. Plus, you include some business logic. Collectively, these ingredients help you create the desired look and feel without coding. Moreover, you can create things in hours that before might have taken weeks.”

Shirazi says many insurance companies have a wide range of products, and each product will require different actions depending on where you are in the customer lifecycle. No-code makes it far easier to handle everything from onboarding through to claims. Ongoing support is also easier, particularly when you need to update insurance details because an address is no longer current or there have been other changes in personal circumstances.

“For most of these changes, companies would normally have to create new applications and a new code base to manage them,” says Shirazi. “That can be slow and cumbersome. No-code simplifies the process and you can embed smarter calculations, and, unlike filling a paper form where you have to go through pages and pages of things, you eliminate anything that isn’t relevant. Pretty much every aspect of communication with your insurance company is easier.”

Shirazi says this can even improve distribution, before the quote stage, when you want to reach out to potential customers through sales and marketing. You can go to market quicker with the right content, which, as he explains, can help agencies and partners.

Innovation and security

No-code is also useful for testing new ideas and experimenting, much like developers do in a sandbox environment. “It helps you work collaboratively and productively with customers,” says Shirazi. You can share a live view of what everyone is doing and see ideas in progress, inside the platform itself. And of course, with all the big AI developments, the digital experience will only become more refined.”

As for security, Shirazi believes that no-code has now reached the stage where the advantages outweigh any security risks. He says that when you have a no-code platform, and you want to launch new processes or products, you don’t have to go through deep security inspections every time you try something new. By contrast, if you have to code everything, you need to implement security from scratch because new code may behave differently.

“All the things you have to work hard on from a security perspective, you’ll get them for free, out of the box, as part of a no-code platform,” says Shirazi. “We also have good global standards today, so everything is well-defined and controlled.”

In addition to enhancing customer experience and reducing time to market, no-code bridges the digital skills gap. “With no-code platforms, more people can be involved in the development of new products or workflows,” says Shirazi. “That’s great for diversity, as well as innovation.”