How New Insurance Tech Streamlines the Regulatory Process

For many within the industry, the lure of convenience offered by insurtech is often tempered by concerns about compliance.

The fear is this: compliance is complicated, and these digital products make things so fast and so easy… so how can they possibly be compliant? 

It’s actually quite simple.

Leveraging industry expertise

Firstly, any insurance SaaS worth its salt has a firm compliance foundation. At Bestow, for example, we’ve assembled a robust compliance team and filled our organization with a deep bench of insurance industry expertise.

Built-in compliance up front

The next advantage is the technology itself. A modern technology platform can shift the regulatory burden from its usual location further down the development pipeline (and then ongoing as needed) to a front-loaded position. Translation: regulatory rules and complexities are quite literally built into the foundation of every product from the very beginning, with compliance oversight all along the way.

Legacy systems are inflexible

Another benefit to a modern tech stack is flexibility. Regulations are always changing, and older systems can require lengthy processes for each regulatory change. Some carriers even report spending up to 70% of annual IT budgets on such maintenance.

Tobie Brink, Compliance Director at Bestow, says “in my experience, things as innocuous as a state changing language requirements for certain questions, or verbiage around fraud, can take some carriers months to resolve.” 

Patrick Brusnahan of Life Insurance International echoes that sentiment, saying “legacy technology often lacks the flexibility and technical capability to adapt quickly, making it challenging to stay on top of regulatory developments.” Read more at Life Insurance International.

“A platform like Bestow’s builds compliance rules into every product up front,” says Ben Sperry, Deputy Chief Compliance Officer at Bestow. “Our flexible framework allows us to handle ongoing regulatory changes in days or weeks.”

One thing carriers can all agree on is that deftly navigating the regulatory landscape is critical. The fact is the sooner carriers migrate to newer technology stacks, the quicker they can exponentially reduce the resources it takes to manage that vital piece of insurance product development and maintenance.