2024 Global P&C Insurance BPO Market Analysis: Driving Efficiency & Innovation
Abstract
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Third Party Administration (TPA) services offer insurers a way to reduce costs, address operational issues, and create new opportunities for growth. Insurers look to outsourcing vendors to reduce costs, increase agility, and improve digital capabilities to manage their business operations more efficiently. This report presents a unique market analysis of global life insurance outsourcing deals and the trends driving the industry foward.
The insurance business process outsourcing market has expanded greatly since Celent started analyzing it in 2011. As insurance company operations become more complex, insurers are constantly looking for specialized expertise and technology skills, all while trying to maintain or lower costs. Instead of hiring staff or building or buying technology solutions, many insurers choose to outsource functions like claims processing, policy administration, and customer support to third-party service providers. P&C insurers are also looking to outsourcers to help them digitize and automate operations, benefit from best practices and new AI and analytics tools, and to provide staff augmentation during peak times.
The biggest difference between BPO and TPA is the type of work the outsourcer performs and the technology on which they perform it. BPO providers tend to be more transactional in nature and provide cost efficiencies due to the use of a common technology across all clients and low-cost labor. TPA providers tend to offer judgment-intensive processes, like claims decisioning, on vendor or insurer platforms. TPA services include more judgement and often are related to claims processing.
Table 1: BPO and TPA Outsourcing Models
Outsourcing Model |
Details |
Traditional BPO |
Primarily utilized for non-core activities, with a focus on labor arbitrage and cost reduction |
Digitally- |
Delivers comprehensive support across business processes by providing skilled personnel and a select range of technological tools |
|
BpaaS (business process as a service) |
Facilitates business process support throughout the value chain by offering on-demand access to people, technology, and infrastructure, following a pay-as-you-go model |
Traditional TPA (third party administrator) |
Delivers services encompassing specialized areas of insurance administration while assuming financial risks associated with process management |
Transformative TPA |
Delivers services encompassing specialized areas of insurance administration using modern policy administration systems |
Source: Celent
This report is designed to provide some context for discussion of the global P&C insurance business process outsourcing market by analyzing the current uses of BPO for core insurance services based on input from the companies providing services. To gauge the state of insurance BPO across the globe, Celent invited nearly 100 firms—all of which offer BPO services to insurers—to participate in a survey. Data was received on 567 deals from 14 vendors.
Eleven firms reported 366 global P&C insurance deals. These service providers include most of the companies that Celent believes constitute the top tier of insurance BPO providers. In addition to a survey, Celent conducted 12 qualitative follow-up interviews with key vendors to validate the findings from the raw data.