insurance case study with solution

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Galena Pisoni.

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence maybe seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Since the first insurance contract, dating from over 600 years ago, the basic model of how insurance companies work has remained unchanged. Companies compensate clients financially against loss or damage from a specified event. Customers pay premiums to obtain such coverage. The long history of insurance has proven that the model works. People and businesses buy insurance products and studies show that consumers have a high level of confidence in the industry.

While insurance companies continue doing business the same way they have for years, they have failed to innovate. This failure to improve is most glaring with the customer experience. For example, many customers have difficulty understanding the differences between insurance policies and complicated insurance contracts. Many do not understand the conditions of the contracts and they are not confident the insurance product offered will satisfy their needs completely.

Customer expectations have changed. In the past, when buying goods or services, customers had few possibilities to compare prices between local agents or dealers. With the emergence of the internet, this has changed and readily accessible information allows for 24/7 active comparisons and searches for the best price via different channels.

Because of digital transformation, insurance consumers increasingly want to interact with companies anytime and anywhere. Therefore, companies constantly search for new ways to engage consumers digitally and where they want to be engaged. Companies are now expected to engage via channels such as text, chat, voice assistants, websites and mobile devices for customer acquisition and service. If a company does not offer a positive digital experience, many customers, particularly younger people, will move to industry competitors that offer better customer experiences digitally or they may turn to adjacent industries that offer the service as an “add on.”

Most insurance companies are left with systems, processes and practices that would be still recognizable by those in the industry in the 1980s. Though the insurance sector has stagnated, changes across other industries have been groundbreaking (invention of smartphones, social media, YouTube, Google and Amazon). Changes brought by digitalization of other industries exert even more pressure to the insurance industry.

A new era also brings new risks. For instance, organizations are increasingly concerned about their cyber risk exposure. As a result, companies have increasingly turned to the insurance industry with a need for cyber risk insurance products to better manage cyber threats and any resulting legal liability from data breaches. These new risks are opening the doors for insurance companies to provide new products and services, but the industry is immature and takes considerable resources to develop products and services in this new market. New technologies such as big data, cloud computing and social media increase the risks resulting from cybercrimes and cyber risks are now one of the top concerns of business leaders. Every organization is vulnerable to potential losses resulting from electronic data theft. Organizations want to protect themselves and their reputations from cyber risks as well as the data and records of their customers. For this, they turn to insurance companies, which in turn may not be prepared to help a company understand its cyber security risk profile.

leverage the most advanced technologies, as the most innovative solutions are at the core of the company;

focus on improving the experience to foster a user-centric approach, for instance, some focus on improving the purchasing stage, the underwriting process or streamlining claims management; and

develop an agile culture and approach, along with leveraging analytics to make faster business decisions.

In this paper, we analyze what small- and medium-sized insurance companies can do to leverage new technology and describe digital transformation in an Italian company that used this approach.

The case study company

Assinord Verona S.R.L offers insurance products in five different lines of business (all types of insurance products) and functioning relies on 15 people in the company and a number of collaborators from all over Italy that contribute to the growth of the company. Now, the company has more than 10,000 clients across Italy.

The study of the adoption strategy of innovative digital insurance solutions to improve everyday operations of the company.

Understanding the needs of the company and the customers with one-on-one sessions with team members and the development of first prototype for a platform to better connect the company with the customers.

The study of different cyber risk policies to enrich the product portfolio and company offering.

We explored the company offers and the established company processes to understand how to implement effective digital transformation. We studied the differences in complex insurance offers for existing clients and the author talked with the owners to understand how to make the whole process smoother.

The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, we present the analysis of the different strategies to approach innovation and the one chosen by the company; in Section 3, we present the platform for connecting the company with the clients; and in Section 4, we present the analysis of cyber risks and the kind of insurance policies the company enriched the portfolio with to offer more up-to-date products. We conclude the paper with Section 5, in which we present the takeaways from the process and recommendations for potential next steps.

Strategy for adoption of new insurance technologies

Based on the literature, we researched how other companies of similar size have approached the digital transformation phenomenon and which approach best fits this company. We summarize the different strategies used by companies in the past: internal innovation, buy from startups, partner with startups and invest in startups. A brief summary of the different methods and the reaction to these by the company is discussed.

Internal innovation

One strategy that companies have been using to embrace digital trends is to foster innovation and the birth of new ideas internally. Different tools and methods for internal innovation have been described in the literature ( Wilson, 2017 ; O’Brien, 2004 ; Kohli and Melville, 2019 ). We present a summary of the possible tools to use in Figure 1 . With internal innovation, the idea is to encourage employees to generate ideas from their everyday experience and rely on simple methods such as researching current trends, applying customer intelligence, identifying customer needs, applying design thinking and user-driven innovation to implement process improvements and redesign business strategies. Key to this process is using brainstorming techniques to come up with innovative ideas.

The company’s ability to implement the ideas is limited and that is why ideas generated internally are usually implemented by dedicated teams.

Buy from startups

Other companies partner with tech startups by purchasing their services, licensing their solutions or co-developing solutions. Companies usually partner with highly specialized startups on new technologies that insurance companies can purchase to improve operations. One such example is Cognotekt, which provides software as a service for insurers to automate claims. Another example is Insurify, a personal insurance company that compares car insurance.

Partner with startups

Another strategy involves partnering with other companies to offer services to customers by bundling offers between two companies or by providing customers new “white brand” products. New technologies require special knowledge and expertise that insurance companies do not usually have. Existing insurers can partner with technology companies to innovate along different parts of the customer value chain.

Invest in startups

This strategy is most common for big incumbents but is occasionally used by smaller companies. This approach involves investing in a startup that may rely upon one incumbent for funding. The majority of the world’s largest insurers (AXA, Allianz, AIG, MetLife and Generali) have established their own in-house venture capital (VC) funds and committed investment in startups. These insurers select the areas where they want to innovate, and then look for startups in the field. In 2019, more than 140 traditional and corporate VC firms invested in an InsurTech startup.

What did the company decide?

The objectives when partnering with an InsurTech startup should be clearly aligned with the expected impact, which should be incremental, adjacent or transformative.

Business objectives should determine the model of cooperation and help to prioritize solutions and types of relationships to have with the InsurTech startups.

When choosing the companies to collaborate with, the expected impact on the company operations should be quite clear.

The different options were presented to the case study company and the decision was to do both: to try internal innovation (and in the following section, we show some examples of this approach) and to look for startups to buy products from or partner with in cases where there are mutual benefits. For the latter, we decided to rely on Plug and Play in Munich.

Partnership with Plug and Play in Munich: Plug and Play accelerates and invests in startups. It runs over 28 stage agnostic programs a year and invests in over 260 companies. Plug and Play matches startups and corporations worldwide. Our company chose to get in touch with the headquarters in Munich to start collaboration. Plug and Play supports three main lines of program: product innovation (startups working on digital transformation, improving user experience and risk assessments), new sources of risk (startups working on cyber security and other modern concerns) and disruptive ideas (startups working on industry changing business models such as the shared economy that are transforming current markets). The company decided to continue looking into startups coming from the production innovation track. In sequential meetings, different solutions will be presented to the business owners and will be made available for future analysis.

Platform for connecting the company with the clients

In this section, we show the results from pursuing internal innovation efforts to come up with a platform for connecting the company with its clients.

We started with underlining the actors involved in the system (customers and people inside the company) by using design thinking ( Brown and Wyatt, 2010 ; Kumar, 2009 ) and creative facilitation ( Van Boeijen et al. , 2014 ) as methods. The author performed one-to-one interviews with customers of the company to understand what kind of technology can better serve their needs in terms of insurance and can bring a better understanding of complicated insurance terms and contracts. The author performed 15 interviews (each lasting 1 h) with loyal clients the company selected. The questions were intended to help us understand how customers make buying insurance policy decisions. It also mapped the user experience from the time the individual started thinking about buying insurance all the way through the actual purchase of the insurance policy. In our search for the best ideas, we also involved employees. The author had three brainstorming sessions (each lasting 1 h) in which all the employees participated. In the brainstorming sessions, the employees were asked to reflect on the needs and situations in which the customers usually buy products (the customer interview data were given as input for each session) and they were asked to develop ideas for design concepts that were used later to develop a prototype.

From the interviews with the customers and employee brainstorming sessions, it became clear that life insurance policies presented a clear opportunity to simplify the user experience. We pursued this further by working on a prototype. After all the data was gathered and analyzed, we developed a prototype that would advise the customer about the ideal amount of life insurance coverage they should purchase. The prototype was based on demographic data entered by the consumer (age, income, partner’s income and children). This data made it possible to better understand the consumer’s life situation to present them with a recommended amount of life insurance. With this information, the yearly premium could be calculated and presented to the customer for the suggested amount of life insurance.

The prototype also helped with understanding the operations of the company. Usually only one employee in the company performs these tasks, recommending the amount of life insurance a person should have. This employee makes recommendations based on his own experience. With this prototype, the idea is to create a tool that optimizes the process to recommend and quote life insurance, by enabling all employees to do life insurance quotes, eliminating the need to rely on or wait for a single employee with such knowledge. It also allows better productivity by making it faster to do estimates.

Does the idea enhance the existing product offering?

Is the solution compliant with regulatory requirements or are they unknown or undefinedat the moment?

Is the idea something the customer wants and needs?

Is the idea commercially viable? Does it bring potential commercial benefits for the company and is it feasible to implement?

This process has been adapted from different approaches for service design presented in Kimbell (2014) . The idea seemed to satisfy all the above-mentioned aspects. After several iterations of the design, we came up with the prototype shown in Figures 2 – 4 .

We tested the prototype with several customers and several employees. The initial comments from both of sides were positive and the prototype yielded recognition and enjoyment by all involved parties. The users were curious to find out about the recommended amount that was proposed to them and were very interested in reading the detailed descriptions on why the suggested amount was suited for their particular case. The employees appreciated the ease of use the prototype provided for generating life insurance quotes for customers and the detailed descriptions of why the particular life insurance amount was recommended to them.

It was difficult to change the internal mind-set of the company. It took time and patience to get all the members of the organization on board with using the technology.

It was important to spread the knowledge and competency of the tool across the different key positions in the company and “energize” them about the solution. By having a shared language and communication daily, it allowed for a better understanding of the tool features.

Including multiple stakeholders in the design phase of the prototype allowed employers and customers to bring different perspectives to what different features pffered/

Cyber risk and digital insurance policies

The last area we investigated was the growing need for cyber security by businesses. As the pace of technological change continues unabated, organizations’ reliance on technology has become critical to their ability to offer products and services. Technology is critical to help companies interact with customers and employees. The significant economic impact of cyber risks on companies as well as the recent attention of the media has led companies to look for solutions from available insurance products. Because of this and the increased frequency of cyberattacks, cyber risks are now widely accepted as one of the top emerging risks. Cyber insurance policies provide twofold benefits for the companies buying them: they create awareness that cyberattacks might happen and the company looks for options to reduce these risks. The act of buying cyber insurance makes the company put a price on the potential damage in case the company is compromised by a cyberattack.

Liability risk – It provides compensation and legal support in the event of third-party claims, resulting from loss of personal and/or business data.

Crisis costs – It provides compensation to undertake forensic investigations, reputation public repair, customer notification costs, IT services and cyber incidents.

Fines – It provides compensation for research costs, legal assistance and administrative fines.

Digital media breaches – It covers compensation and defense costs related to third-party claims against the client company arising out of multimedia activities (e.g. defamation, allegation or plagiarism).

Cyber risk – It provides compensations for attacks from malicious software.

Insurance policy for network interruption – It provides protection for loss of revenues or net profits associated with network downtime.

With these products, the company enriched its portfolio of insurance products covering cyber products. With these new products in the portfolio, the sales team started actively promoting these products to businesses. The initial results are positive, at the moment of writing of this paper, the SME has issued five cyber risk policies.

Conclusions and future steps

In this paper, we presented the steps a small Italian insurance company took to respond to the wave of digital transformation. The technology-based organizational transformation required the organization to be flexible and responsive to changes. The article describes how an organization can embrace digital innovation via internal innovation, buying from startups, partnering with startups or investing in startups. It also discusses how the company decided to respond to the challenge by partnering with Plug and Play, an accelerator connecting corporations to startups. The company found the first contacts promising when presented with a number of product possibilities.

The article shows how a company can apply for internal innovation and come up with a simple tool to bring insurers closer to their customers. The approach presented in this paper shows how different design-based approaches and tools can find ways to improvise in a rapidly changing environment, especially at a stage where the needs of users are uncertain. At the moment, the developed platform supports the needs of the company and their everyday work in the office. Future steps foresee full development of the prototype into a working application including the expansion and support of other types of insurance policies, especially car and home insurance policies. The idea will be passed on and developed further by a small separate company that already works on other solutions for insurance incumbents.

The company enriched the portfolio with new insurance products, tackling diverse digital risks. The company can offer insurance products to other companies that go through digital transformation and need to respond to cyber risk. The company has already started selling these products with positive results.

The management of insurance claims continues to be painful for customers – both retail and corporate. Well-managed claims can create a number of efficiencies for an insurance company and help with client retention. Yet at this moment, this area is still under-served by new technology. We see a great opportunity for driving change here and will be exploring startups offering solutions in this space.

The company can potentially increase retention rates by offering benefits for loyal customers or customers who have multiple insurance policies with the company. The company will look for a solution through digital channels to build a behavior-linked loyalty program that tracks people’s activities and rewards them adequately. We plan to study reward mechanisms as a future extension of this work.

Different tools and methods a company can use for internal innovation based on the literature review used in different insurance companies of similar size

In the first screen ( Figure 2 ), the user is asked to enter key personal data points such as age, profession, presence of a partner, children, possession of a house and the income levels as well as level of coverage they would prefer to have

In this screen, the user is shown the ideal amount of insurance, as well as the yearly fee for the coverage amount

Third screen explains the proposed amount for the user’s specific case

Brown , T. and Wyatt , J. ( 2010 ), “ Design thinking for social innovation ”, Development Outreach , Vol. 12 No. 1 , pp. 29 - 43 .

Greineder , M. , Riasanow , T. , Böhm , M. and Krcmar , H. ( 2019 ), “ The generic InsurTech ecosystem and its strategic implications for the digital transformation of insurance industry ”, 40th GI EMISA .

Kimbell , L. ( 2014 ), The Service Innovation Handbook: Action-Oriented Creative Thinking Toolkit for Service Organizations , BIS publishers .

Kohli , R. and Melville , N.P. ( 2019 ), “ Digital innovation: a review and synthesis ”, Information Systems Journal , Vol. 29 No. 1 , pp. 200 - 223 .

Kumar , V. ( 2009 ), “ A process for practicing design innovation ”, Journal of Business Strategy , Vol. 30 No. 2/3 , pp. 91 - 100 .

Nicoletti , B. ( 2017 ), “ A business model for insurtech initiatives ”, The Future of FinTech , Palgrave Macmillan , Cham , pp. 211 - 249 .

O’Brien , C. ( 2004 ), “ Product innovation in financial services: a survey ”.

Van Boeijen , A. Daalhuizen , J. van der Schoor , R. and Zijlstra , J. ( 2014 ), “ Delft design guide: design strategies and methods ”.

Wilson , J.D. Jr. ( 2017 ), Creating Strategic Value through Financial Technology , John Wiley & Sons .

Further reading

Menhart , M. , Pyka , A. , Ebersberger , B. and Hanusch , H. ( 2004 ), “ Product innovation and population dynamics in the German insurance market ”, Zeitschrift Für Die Gesamte Versicherungswissenschaft , Vol. 93 No. 3 , pp. 477 - 519 .

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the company host Assinord Verona S.R.L. and all the employees for their time and effort dedicated to this project.

Corresponding author

About the author.

Galena Pisoni is based at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy.

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Insurance Client Managed Services – Case Study

The client is a large insurance provider of valuable insurance coverages and services to home and auto owners, as well as business owners.

Company Description

The client is a large insurance provider of valuable insurance coverages and services to home and auto owners, as well as business owners. Leveraging a large-scale internal and partially external-facing web application, they serve their customers daily with extensive functionality. To achieve other internal processes, they keep numerous background programs that shift data where it can be further harnessed and analyzed. This sophisticated infrastructure enables the client not only to efficiently manage policy issuance, claims processing, and customer interactions but also to extract valuable insights from the data generated. The integration of these background programs ensures a seamless flow of information, contributing to the client’s ability to make informed decisions, enhance operational efficiency, and ultimately provide top-notch services to their diverse customer base.

The client needed to revitalize their core application for their customers and employees to increase productivity. This required an additional effort from experts to learn their systems and maintain their current operations so they could execute this initiative separately.

Our challenge was to absorb as much knowledge of their architecture as possible to transform our team into mirrors of themselves. With so many applications, all with different purposes, grasping and orchestrating the workflows as naturally as the client was paramount. Full-scope awareness was needed to ensure there was minimal effort while delivering on requirements. The sooner we became familiar with the territory, the quicker we would ramp up to clockwork.

Project Goals

• Learn client systems and applications.
• Improve functionality to increase maintainability.
• Document processes to add learned insight.
• Remediate existing issues.
• Append necessary functionality of the client’s current application.

Our strategy we employed was to build a team that the client could recognize as their own and have that team engage with the business stake holders often to keep in parallel with their goals. One unit of the team is determined to keep the intricacies of the day-to-day business in motion; the other unit is to enhance their applications and ensure evolution of business needs are met with equal development. Like incremental code changes to steadily progress these systems, we continuously, sprint after sprint, learned new facets of their business which only added to our tooling and reasoning when approaching tasks whether it be support or development.

Innovations

As mentioned above, one of our goals was to improve upon maintainability. When approaching a series of work items, our team sought to create additions to the client’s codebase that emphasized scalability and removal of limitations. One such improvement was to implement a way to migrate several stored procedures and surrounding code to utilize new extended columns that not only fixed an impassable truncation issue but did so in the least invasive way possible.

In using feature flags, new stored procedures in parallel with old, and new columns we corrected a boundary that as the system grew the values of essential fields were being truncated for one of their lines of business.

Another accomplishment that gave the client’s userbase a useful feature was our team’s implementation of stored payment methods. Putting this in place meant end users could keep their preferred selections of payment method, adding convenience to transactions with the client.

Core Technologies

To accomplish our goals, we leveraged several technologies.

• ASP.NET Core
• ASP.NET Framework
• Classic ASP
• Azure Function Apps

Their core application, due to several years of life cycles, required all these technologies to work together in unison. Some portions such as the client-side were written in VB.NET and Classic ASP while the server-side portions consisted of C#, VB.NET which retrieved data through services referencing their DB2 mainframe and MS SQL databases.

Many times, solutioning a work item called upon a combination of these technologies, where modifications, such as updating a stored procedure, meant also adjusting the .NET code to accommodate the change and ensuring regressive testing was successful. This integrated approach ensured that changes in one aspect of the system were seamlessly reflected throughout, maintaining the overall integrity and functionality of the application. Collaborative problem-solving became a cornerstone of our workflow, as we adeptly navigated the intricate interdependencies between technologies, swiftly adapting to evolving project requirements. This holistic perspective not only streamlined our development process but also fortified the robustness of the entire system, contributing to the overall success of our projects.

Consisting of .NET full stack engineers, we all brought extensive experience to the equation. Though split into two units, each with its unique objectives, we seamlessly collaborated to provide a comprehensive and integrated solution, ensuring a wide coverage of value for the client. Our collective expertise in front-end and back-end development, database management, and system architecture allowed us to tackle diverse challenges efficiently. By fostering a culture of open communication and knowledge-sharing, we leveraged the strengths of each unit to create a cohesive and synergistic team. This collaborative approach not only enhanced our productivity but also enriched the final deliverables, demonstrating the effectiveness of a unified, multidisciplinary team in achieving client success.

Though important to keep in our purview, Primary Key Indicators (PKI) were metrics we assured through collaboration and improvisation. We applied Agile concepts and methodology to how we conducted our implementations. By always seeking ways to alleviate blockers and keep the team thriving, we kept the development momentum going and our metrics reflected this.

Our client saw a drastic reduction in ticket counts and corrections to issues that had long caused problems. No matter how small the incident was our team determined the root cause to eliminate future tickets. The more we resolved the more our service snowballed into streamlined support for their business which ultimately resulted not only in an unhindered effort towards their roadmap but also an ever-increasing, stabilizing set of applications left better than before.

In conclusion, this case study highlights the successful collaboration between our team and the insurance client, showcasing our commitment to delivering innovative solutions and exceptional service. Through a dedicated effort to absorb the intricacies of the client’s architecture, our team has effectively mirrored the client’s expertise, ensuring seamless delivery of services and support. This partnership demonstrates our ability to tackle complex challenges and deliver tangible results, reinforcing our position as a leader in providing top-tier managed services. We look forward to continuing our relationship with the client, driving further advancements, and contributing to their ongoing success in the dynamic insurance sector.

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Applications for BriteCore’s P&C insurance core platform

Project overview, client information.

BriteCore offers cloud-based software for enterprises to ensure high security, performance, and scalability. It is recognized as an established industry leader, offering world-class solutions, services, and expertise to over 50 insurance carriers, InsurTechs, and managing general agents. It helps companies enhance their time-to-market, become more competitive, and gain higher revenue.

Team composition

Client name

Expertise used

Cloud solutions , BI and reporting

Services provided

Software architecture , UI/UX design , Web app development , Mobile app development , Custom software development

United States of America

Insurance , InsurTech

Business challenge

BriteCore first partnered with DICEUS to build an internal administrative cash flow management and budgeting app for BriteCore. After the initial project was complete, BriteCore invited DICEUS to participate in BriteCore’s Community Code Contribution program where the team continues to provide overflow capacity and support to BriteCore engineers. Through the program, DICEUS engineers work alongside BriteCore engineers to develop multiple enterprise-level products (modules) including BriteQuote, BriteApps, and BriteDocs.

Technical challenges

DICEUS helped develop mobile and desktop solutions that seamlessly integrate with the BriteCore platform. All solutions had to be fully customizable to meet carrier needs and interoperable with other BriteCore products.

Solution delivered

First, DICEUS created an internal budgeting application in Python and adopted new data transformation processes according to specific customer needs. Next, we contributed to the development of three BriteCore products: BriteApps are mobile and desktop BriteCore products that can be tailored and branded according to the carrier’s needs. BriteQuote provides configurable pages, fields, and components to create quoting wizards for different lines of business. The solution is interoperable with other BriteCore modules. BriteDocs is a new, standalone document management system designed to handle documents throughout the insurance lifecycle.

Key features

BriteApps policyholder portal

Provides a new digital channel for policyholders. Available for mobile and desktop; it can be tailored by the insurer to reflect their logo and company color scheme. The portal itself has the following capabilities:

Claims management

Policy documents

Payment processes

View insurance provider

View messages

BriteApps administrative portal

Manages BriteApps administrative processes within the company including user settings, application monitoring, and control

Enrolled user management

Access rights management

Activity monitoring

Messaging to one or multiple users

Paperless document delivery

Customizing your applications

BriteApps message center

Enables insurers to send messages to a single user or to all users. Text can be translated into the user’s preferred language. Supports emails, in-app messages, and push notifications.

BriteQuote configuration

Enables the creation of quoting wizards that allow agents to perform a sequence of steps to make a quote. The quote wizards are fully configurable by lines of business, role, transaction type.

BriteQuote pages & components

Controls the display of information for agents over single or multiple pages and the ability to move through the pages and display data in pre-defined places.

BriteDocs stock & custom templates

Supplies stock and custom templates to use throughout the insurance lifecycle.

BriteDocs data aggregation

Acts as a data aggregator for claims, policies, quotes. This data can be transformed and inspected easily, as well.

Value to our client

Enhanced user experience.

The BriteApps portal equips policyholders with a new digital channel to access their documents and perform payments or enroll autopay, eliminating the requirement for in-person interaction.

Efficiency gains & cost savings

Self-service capabilities in BriteApps enable policyholders, agents, and the insurer to communicate and transact business more efficiently and conveniently, enabling more process automation, reducing cycle times, and driving costs down.

Higher mobile security

Instead of using passwords, mobile users are now able to use face recognition, touch ID, or fingerprints for authentication.

Improved communication

All the communication goes through the message center that provides capabilities for text messages, push notifications, in-app messages, emails.

Our tech stack

Client feedback

The DICEUS team has consistently supported the BriteCore team for many years. Their engineers are well-educated and highly invested in the ongoing quality of the BriteCore platform with sustained relationships that extend over four years. We appreciate everything the DICEUS team brings to the table as a development partner.

Phil Reynolds, CEO, BriteCore

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• Research note
• Open access
• Published: 10 September 2022

A case study of adapting a health insurance decision intervention from trial into routine cancer care

• Miles E. Charles   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8381-6803 1 ,
• Lindsay M. Kuroki 2 ,
• Ana A. Baumann 1 ,
• Rachel G. Tabak 3 , 4 ,
• Aimee James 1 ,
• Krista Cooksey 1 &
• Mary C. Politi 1  

BMC Research Notes volume  15 , Article number:  298 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

This study adapted Improving Cancer Patients’ Insurance Choices ( I Can PIC), an intervention to help cancer patients navigate health insurance decisions and care costs. The original intervention improved knowledge and confidence making insurance decisions , however, users felt limited by choices provided in insurance markets. Using decision trees and frameworks to guide adaptations, we modified I Can PIC to focus on using rather than choosing health insurance. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unforeseen obstacles, prompting changes to study protocols. As a result, we allowed users outside of the study to use I Can PIC (> 1050 guest users) to optimize public benefit. This paper describes the steps took to conduct the study, evaluating both the effectiveness of I Can PIC and the implementation process to improve its impact.

Although I Can PIC users had higher knowledge and health insurance literacy compared to the control group, results were not statistically significant. This outcome may be associated with systems-level challenges as well as the number and demographic characteristics of participants. The publicly available tool can be a resource for those navigating insurance and care costs, and researchers can use this flexible approach to intervention delivery and testing as future health emergencies arise.

Introduction

JL is a 66-year-old patient with progressive, recurrent ovarian cancer whose clinician recommended that she start on a targeted, oral cancer therapy based on genomic testing of her cancer. A month after receiving this recommendation, JL received a “summary of benefits” from her insurance company reflecting she owed a $3000 USD co-pay for a 30-day supply of this targeted therapy (the goal was to continue this therapy until her disease no longer responded to it, or she had intolerable side effects; her clinicians estimated this might take 1–2 years). As a full-time employed nurse, JL had health insurance. However, she did not qualify for the industry-sponsored financial assistance drug program because her annual income was slightly ($3500) over the allowed threshold. She would have to spend down 3% of her income on prescriptions that year in order to receive 100% coverage for the medication. Furthermore, because she had both government-sponsored and private insurance, her government-sponsored insurance made her ineligible for a “co-pay card” sponsored by the pharmaceutical company. JL was extremely distressed about this financial strain and considered whether and how she could take this therapy recommended by her doctor.

JL, like many under-insured patients, was inadvertently overlooked by her oncology team to be at risk for what scholars refer to as “financial toxicity,” or the material and psychosocial hardship from high costs of care. Yet, as many as 64% of patients report financial hardship following a cancer diagnosis [ 1 ], and many face barriers, like those described above, that prohibit affordable access to needed cancer therapies [ 2 , 3 ]. We use this case study to describe the critical steps we took to adapt and implement a health insurance decision intervention for cancer patients and survivors like JL, while balancing intervention testing and adaptation with real-world needs during a global pandemic.

Evidence supporting the intervention and the need for adaptation

Improving Cancer Patients’ Insurance Choices ( I Can PIC) is an interactive online decision tool originally designed to help cancer patients, like JL, think through their health insurance choices and identify ways to offset high costs of cancer and survivorship [ 4 ]. It provides tailored cost estimates across insurance plan types based on demographic and health characteristics and provides financial support resources.

In a randomized controlled trial of I Can PIC compared to an attention control group where participants were given an alternative intervention: a handout that lists financial resources along with brief definitions of health insurance terms, I Can PIC users knew more about health insurance and were more confident understanding insurance terms [ 4 ]. However, many I Can PIC users reported that their employer-based and marketplace insurance gave them limited choices [ 4 ]. This implied the potential to better align the tool within the current insurance landscape, even if it required adaptation before meeting all of its goals [ 5 ]. Therefore, the team elicited feedback from clinicians, patients, and policy experts on ways to emphasize using health insurance rather than focusing mostly on choosing health insurance (Additional file 2 : Table S1). This paper describes the adaptation process of I Can PIC to achieve these goals.

Intervention adaptation process

We used two guides to structure the adaptation process. The Iterative Decision-making for Evaluation of Adaptations (IDEA) decision tree informed the process of adaptation [ 6 ], and the Framework for Reporting Adaptation and Modifications-Expanded (FRAME) guided the tracking of adaptations (Fig.  1 ) [ 7 ]. To start the adaptation process, we first identified the core elements of the intervention that improved outcomes: health insurance educational resources, cost-of-care conversation guidance, and resources to offset costs which are critical to patients like JL (Additional file 1 : Fig S1). During this iterative process, we then added new elements to I Can PIC and made content, format, and functional improvements based on stakeholder feedback and the original trial results (Additional file 2 : Table S1).

I Can PIC as Tracked and Adapted Using the FRAME Approach

Assessment of the adapted I Can PIC tool

After we adapted I Can PIC , we assessed its effectiveness among newly-diagnosed patients with gynecological, colorectal, or lung cancer, examining their health insurance knowledge, financial toxicity, health insurance literacy, and delayed or forgone care due to cost. We conducted a historic control survey assessing these constructs as well as whether and how treatment costs were discussed with patients at their most recent visit with their physicians. Next, we conducted a brief virtual/video conference training with fifteen medical or surgical oncologists to talk about screening for financial distress and discussing costs with patients. After the training, we conducted a pilot intervention study where patients were sent I Can PIC , completed a survey after their upcoming oncology appointment, and a follow-up survey 3–6 months after recruitment. Once during the study, we gave the oncologists feedback and reminded them to screen for financial distress and refer patients to I Can PIC. This study was approved by the Human Research Protection Office at Washington University in St. Louis (protocol number 202003033).

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unforeseen obstacles to patient enrollment that shifted in-person recruitment to virtual methods (e.g., phone calls and emails) from secured, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant university-affiliated phone numbers and emails. We also partnered with the institutional review board and streamlined the consent script to be more succinct and engaging [ 8 ]. Prior to these changes and even after, many newly diagnosed cancer patients did not want to add a research commitment to their already busy or overextended lives. With recognition of these challenges and others, the revised version of I Can PIC was made available to the public while undergoing testing so that patients outside of eligibility criteria, like JL with recurrent cancer, or patients not interested in research, could still benefit from its health insurance and care costs information and support.

Eligible patients for both the historic control and intervention groups were English speaking, at least 18 years old, eligible for insurance through their employer or the federal marketplace, and diagnosed with a new lung, gynecological, or colorectal cancer within five months. Participants were recruited from a single site, NCI-designated cancer center where fifteen oncologists (five gynecologic oncologists, three colorectal surgeons, two medical oncologists treating colorectal cancer patients, and five thoracic surgeons treating lung cancer patients) gave the study team permission to review medical records and approach eligible patients for study participation. Recruitment into the historic control group began in May 2020. Starting in October 2020, we conducted our first provider training, since health insurance open enrollment was beginning, and we wanted at least some patients to use I Can PIC while they had options of changing insurance. Between October 2020 and February 2021, we trained the fifteen oncologists to screen for financial toxicity and discuss care costs with patients.

After clinicians were trained, we recruited patients into the intervention arm. Patients were asked to review I Can PIC before their upcoming appointment. After they met with their oncologist, the research team sent them a survey that could either be completed online or by phone. A three-month follow-up survey was also sent to patients in the intervention arm.

Patient socio-demographics were self-reported. As in the original trial, participant numeracy and health literacy were assessed using validated scales [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Primary outcomes included health insurance knowledge, health insurance literacy, frequency, and type of care cost conversations (including topics and strategies discussed), financial toxicity, and patient referrals to resources to further discuss costs [ 13 ].

Statistical analysis

Descriptive statistics were calculated for all sociodemographic variables and compared between groups using chi‐square analyses or Fisher's exact test for categorical variables, as appropriate, and the Kruskal–Wallis test for continuous variables. Baseline surveys for both the control and intervention groups were compared for one-way analysis of variance, Fisher's exact test to determine if there were nonrandom associations between two categorial variables, and Chi-Square tests to determine if two categorical variables were independent. To compare the intervention at the baseline survey and 3–6 month follow-up survey, paired t-tests for continuous variables and kappa statistics for categorical variables (discussed costs or not, discussed cost strategies or not, referral made or not, etc.)

During our study period, there were 1512 total logins on the I Can PIC website, of which 1058 (70%) were guest users. Guest users were treated in other facilities, ineligible due to cancer type, or not interested in participating in the research study, but wanted to access the information. Among the 136 consented and surveyed participants (68 historic controls; 68 intervention group), socio-demographics were similar except that the intervention group was slightly higher educated (Table 1 ). The intervention group had slightly higher health insurance knowledge (mean score 77.02 vs 72.45) and slightly higher health insurance literacy (mean score 34.71 vs 33.03) compared to controls; these differences were not statistically significant. Knowledge and health insurance literacy was sustained at the 3–6 month follow-up.

The frequency of cost discussions related to cancer care was similar between the intervention and control groups (57.4 vs 67.7%, p = 0.22), with the most common topics involving insurance, time off work, and costs of medications. Specific cost strategies that were discussed are detailed in Table 1 . Overall, a small proportion of patients received referrals (eg., I Can PIC website or any outside agency/office such as government assistance, community agency or charity, or hospital billing) from their oncologist to learn more about cancer costs and did not vary by group (controls, 16.2% vs intervention group, 20.6%).

Financial toxicity was reportedly low in both groups (17.7% in the control vs 16.1% in the intervention group), though decreased slightly within the intervention group during the study period (first survey average score was 16.06 vs. 14.17 at the 3–6 month follow-up). Unfortunately, 18% of individuals in the control group and 13% in the intervention group reported delaying care due to cost (p = 0.41).

Throughout the adaptation process, it is important to ensure that end users like JL can benefit from effective interventions, even if interventions require refinement and continued testing. Using systematic decision trees and guides such as IDEA and FRAME, we described one way to systematically track intervention adaptations while ensuring real-world access throughout the process to benefit patients. Strengths of our study include our diverse stakeholders which included patients, clinicians and policy experts who provided advice on I Can PIC , including patients across several cancer types, and modification of consent processes and tool access to optimize patient engagement and minimize burden.

This case example provides a guide for deploying low-risk interventions in routine care while continuing to generate evidence and improve on their public health impact. Of 1512 total logins on the I Can PIC website, 70% were guest users outside of the research study, and we hope many of them, like JL, benefited from I Can PIC access even if they were reluctant to join a study. JL ultimately made an informed decision with her oncology team and the support of her family to only work part-time to optimize her benefits in order to receive the targeted, oral cancer therapy through the pharmaceutical company’s financial assistance program.

Despite growing awareness of financial toxicity on underinsured patients, more interventions are needed to better integrate cost conversations into routine cancer care. Systems-level changes are needed to address this burden of care on patients. Future work will continue to build on the frameworks discussed to adapt content and delivery of I Can PIC so that patient-centered outcomes, such as financial toxicity, distress, quality-of-life, and adherence to treatment, are improved. This case study can provide guidance for other implementation studies, including those that might be conducted during future health emergencies.

Limitations

Due to rapid changes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to note limitations of our study design and execution of our protocol. Given this unprecedented time when unmet social and health needs were and still remain under constant threat and turmoil, we acknowledge our non-randomized study design and recruitment of historic controls are critical limitations to interpretation and generalizability of results. The timing of their recruitment could have exacerbated health or financial strain, although the pandemic was still ongoing even at the end of the study with new waves of health risks emerging. Future health emergencies could introduce similar issues without addressing the larger social and societal needs. Furthermore, COVID-19 and rapid transitions to virtual recruitment presented other challenges to this project, which was initially planned to be in person. Despite modifications to the protocol, consent documents, and workflow to reduce burden on participants, systemic issues remained that reduced the diversity of our sample in the research component of intervention implementation. These challenges are likely to remain without addressing systemic barriers to research and care more broadly. Consequently, these results may not be representative of the experiences of lower income and/or racially diverse patients experiencing financial toxicity due to their cancer diagnosis. Ongoing feedback from stakeholders will continue to ensure that the needs of various populations, including oncology providers are considered.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Improving Cancer Patients’ Insurance Choices

Iterative Decision-making for Evaluation of Adaptations

Framework for Reporting Adaptation and Modifications-Expanded

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

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Acknowledgements

Not Applicable.

Financial support for this study was provided in part by a grant from the American Cancer Society (RSGI-17–018-01-CPHPS), the National Cancer Institute (P50CA244431), Washington University’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences Dissemination and Implementation Research Core (UL1 TR002345) and The Foundation for Barnes Jewish Hospital. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the American Cancer Society, the National Institutes of Health, or Washington University. Ana Baumann and Rachel Tabak are funded by CTSA Grant UL1 TR002345 and P50 CA-19–006. Ana Baumann is also funded by 3U01HL13399403S1 and 5U24HL136790-02. LK was supported by the KL2 TR000450 and Doris Duke to Retain Clinical Scientists (2015215).

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Miles E. Charles, Ana A. Baumann, Aimee James, Krista Cooksey & Mary C. Politi

Division of Gynecologic Oncology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, USA

Lindsay M. Kuroki

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All authors contributed to writing, revising, and approving the manuscript. MP led the decision intervention development and adaptation process and critically evaluated and revised the manuscript. MC and LK led the writing of the manuscript, its revisions, and final submission. AB and RT led the evaluation of the adaptation process and critically revised the manuscript for important implementation content. AJ contributed to the design and adaptation of the intervention and critically revised the manuscript. KC led the discussion of the changes to the study as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, assisted with data analysis, and contributed to revisions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mary C. Politi .

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Supplementary Information

Additional file 1: figure s1..

I Can PIC as Adapted and Tracked Using the Iterative Decision-Making for Evaluation of Adaptations (IDEA) Framework Steps.

Additional file 2: Table S1.

Stakeholder- and Participant-Suggested Adaptations to I Can PIC.

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Charles, M.E., Kuroki, L.M., Baumann, A.A. et al. A case study of adapting a health insurance decision intervention from trial into routine cancer care. BMC Res Notes 15 , 298 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-022-06189-8

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Gibson Insurance Case Solution

Gibson Company was based in Kansas City, Missouri. Gibson Insurance’s key products include financial products, i.e. life insurance and annuities. The policies were directly sold by the in-house agents. The Gibson’s management was focused on the corporate acquisition strategy in order to grow the customer base as well as the overall assets, under the company’s management . The company had been using a simple costing method for the allocation of its product’s support costs. The controller (Rebecca Hampton) felt that the simple costing had been working well historically, however, it did not reflect the actual claim over the resources made by the several business units and product lines.

Moreover, it is observed that despite an increased level of sales ; the company’s profitability levels had declined. The company’s management was concerned about finding the key issues related to the incorrect pricing or out of control costs. The company’s controller was sure that a new cost allocation approach would help the company in improving its pricing strategy, whichwould lead towards a better resource’s allocation. The new costing method would enable the company to identify perform the divisions and to determine better product line costs, so that the company’s competitive position could be maintained.

The new cost allocation method is suggested to be activity based costing, whereby the costs are compiled and assigned to the activities based on their relevant activity drivers, unlike the simple costing method, which assigns the cost based on a single cost driver (i.e. number of policies initially). The new allocation bases included the policy acquisition, customer service, sales and marketing and other corporate overhead costs.

The unit support costs have been calculated using the new allocation bases (i.e. steps, calls, contacts and AUM) for all the four support costs. The total number of policies are multiplied with their relevant cost bases, on the basis of which cost drivers are calculated. The aggregate costs related to each cost pool is then divided by the cost drivers, which has resulted in the per units cost of $42.2 (policy acquisition), 44.06 (customer service), 10.02 (Sales & Marketing) and 0.003 (AUM).

Afterwards the cost per policy is calculated by multiplying the cost per unit with the driver use, for the new and in-force annuities and life insurances. The cost per new annuity and life insurance policy are calculated as: $221.52 and $438.22, respectively, while, the cost per in-force annuity and life insurance policy are calculated as $23.73 and $37.02. These costs per policy are used to determine the total cost for the three division i.e. $4,038,341, $4,781,457 and $5,100,202 for Midwest, Gibson and Compton, respectively.

The quantitative analysis shows that the simple costing method was not appropriate for the company as it lead towards the higher level of fluctuations in the total cost for each subdivision. The Midwest division had a high cost through simple cost allocation method; however, the activity based costing resulted in a lower cost. Similarly, the cost for Gibson was slightly less through the activity based costing method. However, the Gibson’s cost was much lower through simple costing method (as shown by graph).

The analysis concludes that the company should adjust its costs according to activity based costing method, as it gives more accurate costs related to each subdivision. Furthermore, the company is recommended to increase its policy prices for the Midwest and Gibson divisions and to lower the prices for the Compton division. These cost adjustments and price change would enable the company to remain competitive in the industry and to keep the operations smooth, efficient and productive..........................

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Data Lake Modernization with AWS for an Appliance Insurer

Breaking down data siloes with strategic data modernization in Insurance

Imagine having peace of mind knowing that your household appliances and electronics are protected by 24/7 support services and reliable insurance coverage in case of total breakdowns.

Established a century back, our client offers insurance, maintenance, and support for domestic products and consumer electronics across the UK in 10+ countries as a favored go-to source for warranty and service plans.

They earned their stripes by offering comprehensive support that shields their customers from unexpected breakdowns and repairs. Their dedication to innovation transcends meeting needs; they anticipate them, constantly evolve to deliver solutions, and keep their customers one step ahead.

Services Active in 10+ Countries

Our client is responsible for safeguarding 20+ million products and orchestrating 3+ million appliance repairs or replacements annually, driven by an unwavering commitment to ensuring their customers’ well-being is at the forefront of their initiatives.

Committed to customer satisfaction, they offered modern-day product insurance and maintenance services. However, with innovative offerings, its dynamic business operations were clouded with a massive influx of data that could be utilized to complement its new-age outlook.

Data was essential for assessing risks, tailoring coverage plans, and swiftly addressing customer needs. Their product and sales teams depended on the data for campaigns, strategies, and innovation. Where a proactive approach to data analytics would enable them to anticipate customer needs, drive research for product development, and deliver data-driven insurance solutions, they were inept because of an unoptimized data ecosystem.

Their fragmented data infrastructure made it challenging to access information. In an industry where speed and personalized services are crucial, the lack of data accessibility posed significant barriers to leveraging advanced analytics and AI solutions, which are essential for staying competitive. Operating with an on-premises legacy data platform, they faced:

• Scalability Challenges: The platform couldn’t handle the growing volume of data, making it difficult to scale operations to meet increasing business demands.
• Cost Inefficiency: Licensing and maintenance of the data platform were prohibitively expensive, compounding the financial strain on the organization.
• Innovation Roadblocks: Difficulty in integrating the on-premises system with other platforms further compounded the problem, decreasing operational efficiency.

Recognizing the urgent need for a solution, our client sought a trusted partner to prepare them for the future, enabling their data landscape with the tools to set them apart. Creating a unified source of truth was the beginning; with Hexaware, they would also soon drive success with agile, data-driven strategies.

Advancing the Visionary Outlook on Personalized Product Insurance

Our client’s vast operations had bottlenecked an unmanageable influx of data from diverse sources, including customer journeys, insured products, claims, appliance, third-party data, Salesforce CRMs, , and policy administration data, housed in their on-premises legacy data platform. Moreover, this data was stored in inaccessible silos within a fragmented landscape, hindering operational efficiency.

To tackle these challenges, we initiated our approach with a robust strategy, focusing on enabling our client’s long-term vision. Our first step was to redefine their perspective on data utilization. To renew their outlook on data, we charted a roadmap to help their vision of harnessing the power of advanced analytics and AI. We built a new data ecosystem that supports their drive to innovate in insurance.

To solve their challenges, we elevated their data and analytics ecosystem with four significant capabilities:

• Real-Time Data Processing

Data Lake Implementation

Centralized Data Catalog

• Monitoring and Optimization

A New Data Ecosystem with AWS Cloud Services

We drove data modernization with AWS within our client’s data ecosystem. Navigating the transformation journey within AWS involves harnessing the suite of its powerful tools. AWS offers comprehensive services designed to overarch our roadmap to help build new data capabilities. 

Real-time Data Processing

Within our client’s AWS data ecosystem, we prioritized real-time data processing to enable swift decision-making, effective fraud detection, and prompt customer service responses. This was achieved by utilizing:

• Event Driven Architecture: Amazon EventBridge provides scalable event-driven architecture, orchestrating workflows and integrating services across the cloud environment. Data uploaded in the source systems triggers a Lambda function that pushes the data to Amazon EventBridge.
• Real-time Data Processing: Amazon Kinesis facilitates real-time data capture and processing, enabling teams to ingest and analyze streaming data for immediate insights and actions. It plays a role in moving scheme and policy data to the Enterprise Data Lake.

Amazon EventBridge, backed by AWS Lambda orchestrates the movement of data using Amazon Kinesis, ensuring that real-time data is funnelled to the Enterprise Data Lake.

We transformed and migrated historical data onto the data lake. Additionally, delta files/incremental data are loaded based on the frequency and scheduling of the feeds. This facilitates near-real-time data processing and analytics capabilities, empowering informed decision-making, fraud detection, and prompt responses to customer inquiries.

The transformation we drove and the AWS Cloud Services that enabled us:

• Scalable Storage and Data Lake: AWS S3, in conjunction with AWS Lake Formation, offers a highly scalable and durable storage solution for the data lake. This ensures the storage of vast amounts of structured and unstructured data cost-effectively, with high availability and durability.
• Serverless Data Integration: AWS Lambda offers serverless computing capabilities for data integration from multiple sources into AWS S3. Lambda helps execute code without provisioning or managing servers, saving costs. AWS Lambda extracts the data, partitions it, and converts the files into a standardized format.
• Data Integration Pipelines: Developed with AWS Glue to ensure seamless data collection, data transformation, and loading of data from multiple sources into the central repository. PySpark is used to automate the data standardization and transformation process to accommodate various data requirements, such as including new records or updating previous ones.

This architecture transformed and migrated historical data onto the data lake, supporting regular updates with delta files/incremental data, thus establishing a comprehensive data management and storage solution.

By building a unified data platform, our clients could establish a solid foundation for their AI and analytics initiatives. This single source of truth facilitates data integration across disparate sources, providing a unified view of data, ensuring comprehensive and high-quality data for training AI models, driving insights, and enhancing business outcomes.

The data governance capabilities we built and the AWS Cloud Services that enabled us:

• Unified, Fortified Data Management: AWS Lake Formation is a cornerstone solution for businesses aiming to streamline data lake management within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) ecosystem. It enabled fine-grained access control for our client’s users, integrating with AWS Identity Access Management (IAM). Sensitive columns containing Publicly Identifiable Information (PII) can be restricted to authorized users only.
• Data Catalog : AWS Glue Catalog provides a centralized view of metadata that can be beneficial to users to search and discover datasets for their analytics, ML and ETL job needs. AWS Glue Crawler automatically extracts metadata information to populate the Glue Data Catalog.
• End User Data Accessibility: With Amazon Athena, end-users can now easily access and analyze standardized and consolidated data, without managing any infrastructure.

The AWS Promise for Trusted, Seamless Data Operations

Leveraging the robust infrastructure and advanced capabilities offered by AWS, companies can achieve unparalleled efficiency, scalability, and flexibility in handling their data workflows. From data ingestion and storage to transformation, analytics, and governance, AWS provides a seamless and integrated ecosystem that empowers businesses to harness the full potential of their data assets.

Seamless data landscape management we orchestrated and the AWS Cloud Services that enabled us:

• Monitoring and Management: Amazon CloudWatch offers comprehensive monitoring and management capabilities for AWS resources and applications, including monitoring data pipelines, setting up alerts, and troubleshooting issues proactively.
• Cost Management and Optimization: AWS Cost Explorer helps manage and optimize cloud spending with customized reports of the environment and specific services, supported with tags for all the resources. This enables better cost control, ensuring efficient use of cloud resources.
• Security and Access Control: AWS Identity and Access Management IAM enables easy management of secure access to AWS services and resources, controlling permissions and enforcing security policies. This ensures data confidentiality and integrity and mitigates risks.

At Hexaware, we don’t just offer solutions; we align them precisely with our client’s business goals. Our consultative and strategic approach to data ecosystem transformation empowered our clients to surpass their objectives of unparalleled customer satisfaction with innovative products on a large scale.

Understanding their challenges enabled us to craft a tailored roadmap seamlessly integrated with their strategic vision. From strengthening risk management to expediting time-to-market for innovative data-first services, our client benefits from tangible business outcomes.

Hexaware’s AWS Service Benefits

80% reduction in data engineering time

Experience an impressive 80% reduction in data engineering time, quickly unlocking the company’s resources for strategic initiatives and innovation.

Automation for 70% faster pipeline development

Automation drove a remarkable 70% acceleration in data pipeline development, enabling swift adaptation and responsiveness to the new environment.

Benefits of Data Consolidation on AWS Data Ecosystem

A single source of truth to drive results faster

A centralized data repository dismantles silos, forging a nexus of policy data to guide comprehensive marketing strategies, informed decision-making, and underwriting strategies.

Real-time risk radar for better customer experience

Access to real-time data enhances risk assessment and mitigation for our insurance clients, elevating customer care experiences and insurance service reliability.

Data-driven market agility

Faster time-to-market built over consolidated data fuels the insurance company’s agility, empowering it to seize market opportunities.

DaaS insights for business analysts

Unified data accessibility through Data as a Service (DaaS) empowers business analysts with insights, fueling strategic initiatives and product refinement.

Risk reduction with zero data errors

Data process standardization becomes the cornerstone of risk mitigation, providing a shield against uncertainties in insurance data management.

Enterprise-wide data process standardization

Achieve data process standardization, ensuring uniformity and reliability across operations for enhanced decision-making.

Accelerated service innovation pipelines

Accelerated automation drives data pipeline development by 70%, propelling the insurance company towards agile policy innovation and adaptation.

In product insurance, where the demands of data proliferation is skyrocketing, we understand that success hinges on more than just a solution—it requires a strategic transformation of the data ecosystem to help address future challenges. That’s why we didn’t just focus on implementation; we looked to nurture our client’s vision for the future.

We’re here to fortify readiness for the distributed cloud paradigm, ensuring that scalability and adaptability remain seamless. As an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, we’re laying down a foundation that meets current needs and anticipates and accommodates future growth.

Together, we relentlessly innovate with you, ensuring the journey toward success is possible and transformational at every turn.

Every outcome starts with a conversation

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Experience new growth possibilities with Microsoft Advertising today >

Digital Third Coast gives client healthy returns during peak seasonal moment

​​The Open Enrollment period is the most competitive time for health insurance companies. Digital Third Coast, the award-winning agency, was up to the challenge to help their client during this peak time.

Their strategy: engage customers across the buying funnel to build a pipeline of high-quality leads. Spoiler alert, they succeeded.​

​​The solution​

​​The first step of Digital Third Coast’s strategy was simple. They launched prospecting campaigns with search and native audience ads to fill the funnel in preparation for Open Enrollment. All the while, they attracted the right customers Similar and In-Market Audiences .

​Next was the real genius of the plan—how they converted previous website visitors to buyers using Remarketing and expanding this practice to new audiences using Customer Match targeting. This top-to-bottom funnel strategy was a success and helped their client achieve a healthy boost in website traffic and conversion rates.​

The Microsoft Advertising team is simply delightful, and their powerful network helped us grow our lead volume during the most important time of the year for us.

​​The results​

​​By the end of the Open Enrollment period, the strategy Digital Third Coast put in motion—powered by Microsoft Advertising’s Audience Network and Search Network—achieved a 1.6x* lift in site visitation rate and 1.7x* lift in conversion rate.

​*Compared to users only exposed to search ads​

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Governor Newsom Unveils Revised State Budget, Prioritizing Balanced Solutions for a Leaner, More Efficient Government

Published: May 10, 2024

The Budget Proposal — Covering Two Years — Cuts Spending, Makes Government Leaner, and Preserves Core Services Without New Taxes on Hardworking Californians

Watch Governor Newsom’s May Revise presentation here

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:  The Governor’s revised budget proposal closes both this year’s remaining $27.6 billion budget shortfall and next year’s projected $28.4 billion deficit while preserving many key services that Californians rely on — including education, housing, health care, and food assistance.

SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom today released a May Revision proposal for the 2024-25 fiscal year that ensures the budget is balanced over the next two fiscal years by tightening the state’s belt and stabilizing spending following the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic, all while preserving key ongoing investments.

Under the Governor’s proposal, the state is projected to achieve a positive operating reserve balance not only in this budget year but also in the next. This “budget year, plus one” proposal is designed to bring longer-term stability to state finances without delay and create an operating surplus in the 2025-26 budget year.

In the years leading up to this May Revision, the Newsom Administration recognized the threats of an uncertain stock market and federal tax deadline delays – setting aside $38 billion in reserves that could be utilized for shortfalls. That has put California in a strong position to maintain fiscal stability.

“Even when revenues were booming, we were preparing for possible downturns by investing in reserves and paying down debts – that’s put us in a position to close budget gaps while protecting core services that Californians depend on. Without raising taxes on Californians, we’re delivering a balanced budget over two years that continues the progress we’ve fought so hard to achieve, from getting folks off the streets to addressing the climate crisis to keeping our communities safe.” – Governor Gavin Newsom

Below are the key takeaways from Governor Newsom’s proposed budget:

A BALANCED BUDGET OVER TWO YEARS.  The Governor is solving two years of budget problems in a single budget, tightening the state’s belt to get the budget back to normal after the tumultuous years of the COVID-19 pandemic. By addressing the shortfall for this budget year — and next year — the Governor is eliminating the 2024-25 deficit and eliminating a projected deficit for the 2025-26 budget year that is $27.6 billion (after taking an early budget action) and $28.4 billion respectively.

CUTTING SPENDING, MAKING GOVERNMENT LEANER.  Governor Newsom’s revised balanced state budget cuts one-time spending by $19.1 billion and ongoing spending by $13.7 billion through 2025-26. This includes a nearly 8% cut to state operations and a targeted elimination of 10,000 unfilled state positions, improving government efficiency and reducing non-essential spending — without raising taxes on individuals or proposing state worker furloughs. The budget makes California government more efficient, leaner, and modern — saving costs by streamlining procurement, cutting bureaucratic red tape, and reducing redundancies.

PRESERVING CORE SERVICES & SAFETY NETS.  The budget maintains service levels for key housing, food, health care, and other assistance programs that Californians rely on while addressing the deficit by pausing the expansion of certain programs and decreasing numerous recent one-time and ongoing investments.

NO NEW TAXES & MORE RAINY DAY SAVINGS.  Governor Newsom is balancing the budget by getting state spending under control — cutting costs, not proposing new taxes on hardworking Californians and small businesses — and reducing the reliance on the state’s “Rainy Day” reserves this year.

HOW WE GOT HERE:  California’s budget shortfall is rooted in two separate but related developments over the past two years.

• First, the state’s revenue, heavily reliant on personal income taxes including capital gains, surged in 2021 due to a robust stock market but plummeted in 2022 following a market downturn. While the market bounced back by late 2023, the state continued to collect less tax revenue than projected in part due to something called “capital loss carryover,” which allows losses from previous years to reduce how much an individual is taxed.
• Second, the IRS extended the tax filing deadline for most California taxpayers in 2023 following severe winter storms, delaying the revelation of reduced tax receipts. When these receipts were able to eventually be processed, they were 22% below expectations. Without the filing delay, the revenue drop would have been incorporated into last year’s budget and the shortfall this year would be significantly smaller.

CALIFORNIA’S ECONOMY REMAINS STRONG:  The Governor’s revised balanced budget sets the state up for continued economic success. California’s economy remains the 5th largest economy in the world and for the first time in years, the state’s population is increasing and tourism spending recently experienced a record high. California is #1 in the nation for new business starts , #1 for access to venture capital funding , and the #1 state for manufacturing , high-tech , and agriculture .

Additional details on the May Revise proposal can be found in this fact sheet and at www.ebudget.ca.gov .