Outsourcing insurance administration can streamline your processes, guaranteeing standard turnaround times and a consistent quality of service throughout the seasons. But many US-based insurance agencies worry about the reputational and security risks that outsourcing insurance data might entail. However, your company can minimize risks by understanding the data landscape and choosing compliant BPO providers that specialize in highly secure insurance outsourcing.
Prioritizing data security ensures safe outsourcing, allowing your organization to grow and profit confidently.
How Is the Insurance Data Landscape Changing—and What Does it Mean for Data Protection?
The insurance data landscape is evolving in three main ways, and understanding all three is vital to confidently moving forward with plans to outsource insurance administration while protecting your company and client data.
- Companies collect vast amounts of complex data for fraud prevention, risk assessment, and pricing. Analytics firms scrape social media, and insurers use aggregated data. Traditional security policies can’t keep up with these evolving data pathways.
- Insurance data security is facing more scrutiny. All industries face heavier obligations to comply with data security standards, routinely comply with internal and external audits, and invest in new technologies to guard their data.
- Insurance outsourcing is simply too valuable to ignore. Insurance companies can reduce expenses and scale their growth by using reputable outsourcing services for back-office operations, call center operations, data hosting, and more.
All combined, that means companies need to depend on an outsourcing partner who develops excellent data protection methods. That starts with understanding some of the biggest concerns.
How Can Insurance Organizations Protect Sensitive Data?
Insurance organizations naturally gather and store an immense amount of sensitive data. This includes:
- Personally identifiable information like names, birth dates, addresses, and social security numbers
- Financial information such as payment card details, insurance policy numbers, and existing bills and invoices
- Sensitive health information that can compromise patients, medical providers, and insurance providers themselves
Insurance companies, and insurance outsourcing partners, must maintain many protocols to protect this information. For example, companies can and should restrict access to different types of information based on a user’s role. They can also set policies prohibiting recordings. Active rules and guidelines, combined with robust and frequent risk assessments, can protect information.
How Do Regulatory Compliance Standards Impact Data Security?
Regulatory compliance is key to data security. U.S. companies must follow data aggregation and anonymization standards. PCI DSS also regulates payment card data handling, from transmission to protection. Adhering to these ensures secure data management.
Beyond those universal standards, companies also need to consider industry-specific data protection regulations. In the insurance world, companies need to comply with HIPAA while handling, storing, or sharing any qualifying health information.
Insurance companies handle various sensitive data, including personal, financial, and business partner information. They must meet strict compliance standards to avoid liability. Even data from EU online visitors requires adherence to regulations.
How Can You Ensure Strong Data Protection When Outsourcing Insurance Operations?
These security concerns do not mean that outsourcing insurance operations are too much risk for too little reward. The benefits that BPO services provide are clear. Work with an outsourced partner that already has explicit data protections and can customize services to meet your security needs by considering the following questions.
How Can You Establish a Strong Data Protection Policy?
First, create a clear data protection policy that sets strict, actionable requirements. For example, your policy can specify aspects like:
- The prohibition of unlawful activities or unauthorized use of data
- Password strength and updating protocols
- Rules regarding technology and recording in the vicinity of the data
- Network and device security protocols
- Minimum requirements for hardware, operating systems, and anti-virus software
Depending on your outsourced service provider, they may already have a personalizable policy document for you to use, or they may be able to comply with your in-house documentation.
Do Your Outsourced Providers Have Strong Security Credentials?
When evaluating outsourced providers for insurance data, check their security credentials. Key certifications include ISO 27001 for data controls, ISO 9001 for IT security in quality management, and SOC for data center security. These show their commitment to privacy and risk management, which ensure better protections for company and client data.
Also, opt for providers that conduct regular audits, maintain active security protocols to protect data (including virtual and physical protections), and continuously assess vulnerabilities.
How Can You Protect Your Data During Information Transfers?
Your data won’t just need protection when outsourced service providers are actively using and storing the data. You also need to consider potential vulnerabilities to the data during transferring.
One of the best mechanisms for protecting this data is encryption, which can make it impossible to identify or translate. Consider standards like Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)-256 ar RSA, a popular asymmetric encryption method. You and your service provider can determine the required encryption standards for both data at rest and data in transit.
Balancing Efficiency with Security in Insurance Outsourcing
Every business faces the conflict of efficiency vs. security. Strong security often causes delays, consumes resources and frustrates users. Companies must balance strict security with practical operations while mitigating data breach risks.
BPO services bridge the gap in this debate by offering tested administrative, data management, and call center solutions. High-quality providers ensure data security through enterprise-level software, encryption, and best practices.
Outsourcing already offers a significant degree of efficiency—and adding data security to the services you select allows you to optimize both security and efficiency while transmitting data and allowing teams outside your building to use it.
How Can a BPO Service Provider Give You Access to More Technology Resources?
A BPO service provider gives you access to more technology resources than your company may afford alone, further increasing data security. Small and medium businesses often make trade-offs when selecting automation, encryption, and cloud tools. BPOs leverage their data volume to secure cost-effective licenses, helping companies use advanced technology at lower costs.
Your BPO services provider can shield your data through more robust encryption tools, security systems, and enterprise-tier administrative platforms.
Looking for a Secure Partner for Insurance Outsourcing? Reach Out to Confie BPO
Whenever you’re handling sensitive data in the insurance industry, there are countless risks from data breaches, cyberattacks, flawed human protocols, and insufficiently specialized data protocols. However, outsourcing operations that use this data don’t increase the risks—with the right BPO, they can decrease them.
Confie BPO provides specialized services for insurance companies, including customer support, payment processing, claims support and processing, and back office processing. We have a team of over 1,000 employees, including professionals with specializations, credentials, and information security backgrounds.
Ready to benefit from outsourcing while still guaranteeing data security? You can contact us online, call us at 800-684-2BPO (2276), or email us at contact@confieBPO.com to discuss your concerns.
