October 2016 - Recent conversations with leading life and annuity carriers highlight shifting trends in the utilization of business process outsourcing (BPO) services, from simple cost reduction to enabling bi-modal operations.

BPO use has been on the rise in recent years, driven by the need to reduce internal operating costs as carrier margins continue to thin. BPO services have also been instrumental in enabling companies to augment their service models with more variable resources.

But more recently, as insurance carriers strive to adapt to changing marketing conditions and the emergence of the next generation of consumers (who have different expectations for both product and service), the need for BPO appears to be increasingly driven by the urgency to support new capabilities rather than to cut costs of current operations.

This executive brief looks at some of the trends and business drivers in insurers’ approaches to considering and adopting BPO.