The following article has been supplied by Sagar Gill, Senior Director, New Products and Innovation, at Symcor.
Relentless technology acceleration holds the potential to boost productivity, cut costs, reinvent workflows, re-wire consumer expectations, and disrupt… everything. We are also seeing geopolitical shifts, especially US-Canada trade relations, having profound implications for the insurance sector. And let’s not forget the evolving regulatory environment.
All of this requires rapid adaptation to an ever-shifting landscape.
Amid this complex backdrop of change, perhaps the most important shifts are those of customer expectations. A 2025 PwC survey found that 80 per cent of insurance CEOs have customer satisfaction metrics embedded in long-term corporate strategy.
Customer satisfaction is typically a direct result of customer experience (CX). This intentionally broad term encompasses the wide range of ways an insurer can interact with a customer’s needs and wants.
Those needs and wants have changed with time. Accustomed to crisp digital experiences, many consumers expect the same level of efficiency and personalization from the insurance sector. Recent polls found that 64 per cent of Canadian insurance consumers prefer to receive their communication digitally and 12 per cent now prefer receiving it from apps2.
To maintain competitiveness in this increasingly complex time, identifying and removing barriers to seamless CX should be a top priority for any insurer. Three barriers are the source of many challenges, and they are all related to one another:
(1) Operational inefficiencies, often due to (2) gaps in digital infrastructure, can contribute to difficulties in (3) keeping pace with regulatory changes. A net result of these inter-connected barriers are time-consuming error-prone processes, leading to poor customer experience and missed opportunities.
Examples of operational inefficiencies include reliance on print-based communications and widening skills gaps (e.g. underwriting, actuarial roles, claims adjusting). Gaps in digital infrastructure produce their own inefficiencies, as many insurers are burdened by costly legacy systems.
While not all regulatory changes are digital-centric for instance, meeting Quebec's French language requirements, plenty are. For example, traditionally in the Canadian insurance sector, drivers were required to carry physical proof of insurance, but regulatory changes have allowed for digital versions now. This can compound the inefficiencies caused by gaps in digital infrastructure.
Closing the digital gap, often referred to as ‘digital transformation,’ is often the shortest path to realizing better operational efficiencies and improved customer experience.
The insurance industry is turning to scalable platforms that offer omni-channel engagement, ensuring that customer interactions are personalized and consistent across touchpoints, from emails to mobile apps.
And by partnering with a single vendor, insurers can streamline their processes, reduce complexities, and improve operational efficiencies. In the past, it was common to have a vendor for email deployment, one for web, another for secure internal communications, etc. But having multiple digital vendors creates two new problems: coordinating information between them, and ensuring each vendor meets compliance standards. In this scenario, vendor management may become its own unwelcome cost centre.
One-stop shops with omni-channel solutions, like Symcor's COR.CCX customer communications delivery platform, help overcome the big barriers to seamless CX without saddling insurers with the risk, cost, and complexity of a multi-vendor environment.
Another example is Symcor’s Policy Assist Central (PAC), a scalable, digital-first solution that:
Streamlining the process, to date PAC has processed over 220,000 additional interest letters, eliminating the need for 460,000 printed pages and simplifying workflows.
The insurance sector is at a crossroads. Customer expectations aren’t just evolving—they’ve already evolved. Legacy infrastructure, fragmented vendors, and outdated workflows aren’t just slowing you down, they’re costing you customers. But here’s the good news: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Strategic outsourcing and unified digital platforms offer the fastest, lowest-risk path to better operations and better experience—today.
The future isn’t coming—it’s already here. The only question is: will you lead it, or be left behind?
Learn how Symcor can help you close the gap. Visit Symcor.ca and take the first step toward seamless, scalable CX transformation.
2 Computershare Group Study: XArtboard 10
