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Whether you're an insurance carrier, MGA, or TPA, claims teams are your first line of defense when communicating with policyholders.
These teams constantly handle time-sensitive, highly regulated documents that directly impact resolution times, compliance, and your reputation. And like any other critical arm of your organization, claims teams need the right tools to make this essential function easier.
Most claims teams rely on Customer Communications Management (CCM) platforms to manage documents, create and store templates, and deploy letters to policyholders. The catch? Most CCMs are designed as broad solutions, catering to all teams across your organization (from marketing to claims and even finance).
Because these industry-agnostic CCMs are built 80/20 (prioritizing many use cases rather than intricate niche functions), relying on them for claims-specific work results in roadblocks and workarounds that hinder efficiency and frustrate internal teams. Fortunately, built-for-claims solutions can easily fill this gap.
Keep reading to discover the core differences between built-for-claims and industry-agnostic CCMs and why your teams can benefit significantly from the latter.
At a Glance: Industry-Agnostic vs. Built-For-Claims Communications Platforms
While industry-agnostic and built-for-claims CCMs aim to streamline correspondence between internal teams and policyholders, they differ considerably in areas such as depth of features and implementation timelines.
Let's break down the characteristics of each platform:
Industry-Agnostic Communications Platforms
These platforms target the communication needs across every vertical within your organization, from marketing and underwriting to claims and finance. They rely on simplified UI and broad functionalities to serve various users without them having to overcome steep learning curves. This emphasis on simplicity and consistency (from both a vendor and tech stack perspective) is what initially makes industry-agnostic CCMs attractive to organizations.
Real-world examples of industry-agnostic CCMs include Smart Communication's SmartCOMM, OpenText's Exstream, and Quadient's Evolve Core. In addition to claims, these platforms offer tools that span various verticals, including healthcare, finance, and even legal. But while the premise of having a Swiss army knife solution looks promising on the surface, this broad approach can spell disaster for teams that require a more nuanced approach to communications.
Built-For-Claims Communications Platforms
Built-for-claims CCMs (like Kyber) focus on addressing the core needs of your claims teams rather than partially serving every vertical across your organization. While these platforms also boast simplified UI and low learning curves, the depth of claims-specific functionalities they offer makes them an even more attractive choice over industry-agnostic alternatives. For instance, while industry-agnostic CCMs offer core use cases like claims systems integrations and static templates, built-for-claims alternatives can leverage AI to extract and apply the correct policy language to documents, eliminating risks of non-compliance or litigation.
Choosing to implement a CCM that's focused solely on claims can seem like a narrow investment at first. But what's on the other side is an easy implementation and numerous long-term benefits, such as:
- Streamlined compliance: Built-for-claims CCMs incorporate relevant clauses based on your jurisdiction, reducing regulatory risk.
- Intuitive workflows: Gain access to workflows that mirror how claims teams operate between adjusters, business unit leaders, claims ops, and more.
- Faster cycle times: Boost policyholder satisfaction and loyalty by reducing the time between claim filing and resolution.
- Effortless integrations: Built-for-claims CCMs easily integrate with your existing tech stack. Gone are the days of expensive retrofitting and workarounds.
In short, built-for-claims CCMs make your communications more compliant, more consistent, and more personalized, traits that lead to happier policyholders and more efficient operations.
The Shortcomings of Industry-Agnostic Communications Platforms
The phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" usually comes to mind when we talk about industry-agnostic CCMs. Because they're stretched so thin to serve multiple teams across your organization, claims-specific use cases rarely go beyond the surface level.
Let's unpack how this lack of depth can directly affect your claims teams in the form of:
Diluted Claims Communication
Industry-agnostic CCMs often miss key communication use cases (like autofill of jurisdiction-specific language or in-depth audit trails) that claims teams rely on daily. And as reliance on ad-hoc manual workflows (due to lack of native features) becomes the new normal, it doesn't take long before teams start to struggle with:
- Constant compliance scares
- Dragging cycle times
- Tedious manual drafting of notices
- Dreaded regulatory updates affecting hundreds of templates
While it's true that you can customize an industry-agnostic CCM to support your claims team, expect to invest heavily in internal IT and development resources. Upgrades like setting up event-based triggers to automate correspondence or building workflows for manager review often demand custom coding, vendor coordination, and weeks (if not months) of lead time.
Plus, you'll still need to maintain separate systems for template management, legal clause libraries, and jurisdictional rule sets.
Hidden Costs and Maintenance Burdens
While having one shared CCM for all teams within your organization may be an easier purchase decision and implementation (especially if working with a service partner), these upfront benefits ignore the "elephant in the room." Overhead on overhead.
Total upkeep costs for these giant systems are staggering, and even the most barebones updates often require a sizeable time and resource investment. As engineering teams get bogged down with upkeep-related tasks, their bandwidth for value-creating work (like building new automations or exploring cutting-edge tech) disappears.
The problems only get worse if you want a platform that isn't out of the box. Dealing with the internal bureaucracy surrounding roadmaps and cross-department initiatives can leave platform development stagnant for months, erasing time-to-value.
Limited Functionalities That Require Workarounds
When claims teams simply can't get what they need from industry-agnostic CCMs, they usually turn to manual workarounds or (in a worst-case scenario) stop using the platform cold turkey.
We've seen adjusters (who have become so frustrated with their CCMs) revert back to editing templates in Word, emailing notices to supervisors, or even dropping documents on managers' desks for approval, creating a correspondence workflow with no built-in consistency or traceability.
This becomes an even bigger problem during an audit or when a regulatory body asks for documentation. Without a clear record of every edit and approval, proving compliance becomes a losing battle.
Slower Implementation and Adoption
Large CCM platforms typically take 8-16 months to design, develop, and implement into your organization's tech stack. That's a significant bump from most built-for-claims CCMs, which also don’t require extensive development or IT work.
Not only is the implementation process not agile enough for claims teams, but it also delays gratification without the eventual payoff. Claims departments are often just one workstream among many in a broader organizational rollout. While they need immediate improvements to their daily workflows, claims-specific use cases rarely receive the focused attention they deserve, and when they eventually land, they often fall flat.
How Built-For-Claims Communications Platforms Address These Shortcomings
Built-for-claims CCMs are the surgeon's scalpel for organizations looking to deliver faster and more accurate service to policyholders. Because these platforms are laser-focused on serving the needs of your claims teams, they require minimal overhead and boast fast implementation times without compromising on use cases.
Let's dive deeper into how built-for-claims CCMs address the shortcomings of their industry-agnostic alternatives, using Kyber as an example:
Enhanced Claims Communication
Kyber empowers claims teams to instantly generate, review, and send complex forms and correspondence with the help of AI — say goodbye to ad-hoc manual workflows that drag cycle times and frustrate policyholders.
Our platform's forte is automatically extracting relevant policy language and regulatory text for your claims teams to use in correspondence with policyholders — no more manual data entry that leads to errors and wasted time. Combine this with other potent native tools (like Parameter Auto-Population for your templates), and notice drafting workflows that used to take hours now take minutes.
But don't just take our word for it. See how Harbor Claims, a leading U.S.-based TPA, reduced letter drafting times by 50% after partnering with Kyber in their case study below.
[Bonus read: See how Harbor Claims streamlines claims communication]
Streamlined Implementation and Reduced Overhead
Adding Kyber into your tech stack isn't the long and arduous process industry-agnostic CCMs are infamous for. The platform's laser focus on claims means change management roadblocks are nonexistent, and because most features (like auto-import of existing templates) are ready to rock out of the box, your development and IT teams won't have to drop everything to ensure smooth onboarding.
Take Kingstone Insurance as an example. They chose Kyber because they needed a comprehensive claims solution they could implement quickly. Kyber had them up and running with automated notice generation in 2 months, improving policyholder communications without the wait times.
Kyber's existing integrations with leading claims management systems also make the implementation process a lot less painful. Rather than spending hours navigating disparate platforms and digging for lost context, your teams will have a seamless experience across the tools they know and love.
The payoff? As your teams reclaim time that was originally spent on overhead, they can focus more on value-creating work like analyzing cases in-depth or reducing leakage.
Enforced Compliance and Security
Like most built-for-claims CCMs, Kyber transforms compliance from a constant worry into a consistent process.
Because your teams can use Kyber to automatically generate letters that align with policy and claim context, correspondence-based compliance scares are no longer a part of your day-to-day routine. And because updates to your templates can be applied across your entire library in minutes, regulatory changes turn from crisis moments to casual Fridays.
The best part? Because Kyber is a CCM that claims teams genuinely like to use (rather than relying on manual workarounds), you can easily track and audit all notices, unlocking full visibility into how each letter was created, edited, and managed.
Are You Ready to Level Up Your Claims Communication?
Don't let industry-agnostic CCMs slow your claims teams down. Join leading insurers like Branch Insurance, Harbor Claims, and Kingstone, who are driving results like these with Kyber:
- 85% reduction in notice drafting times
- 60% less time spent reviewing claim notices
- 3x faster letter cycle times
Book a demo today to see how Kyber can help your team deliver faster, more accurate service to policyholders.
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