The Guidewire Insurance Suite article that we have already published covers the core system: what it manages well (policies, claims, billing) and Gaps That it leaves in the operation.
This article goes to a more specific level: not the system, but the day-to-day life of a medium-sized Spanish insurance company with between 100 and 1,000 employees in processes that no one mentions when talking about digital transformation in insurance.
The Spanish insurance sector had a turnover of around €72 billion in premiums in 2024. [2]
It is a sector with high regulation, long product cycles and a distribution network —agents and brokers— that concentrate more than 50% of sales in non-life and around 65% in life. [1]
That network is also the source of most of the operational problems that midsize insurers haven't solved with current technology.
The five processes that generate the most friction in the medium-sized Spanish insurance company
1. Managing the network of mediators
The mediator —agent or broker— is the most important sales channel for most medium-sized Spanish insurers. [1]
But the relationship between the insurer and its network of brokers involves processes that no insurance core manages well: the continuous regulatory training and certification of the network, the onboarding of new mediators with their registration in the DGS Register of Mediators, the management of portfolio conflicts when a mediator leaves the company and the calculation and settlement of commissions in complex models (base commission + bonus for objectives + overcommissions for premiums in force).
In most medium-sized insurers, one or more of these processes live in Excel or in separate tools that are not connected to the core.
Commission payments are monthly calculated on sheets that someone with special access updates and that, if that person is not there, cannot be audited or reproduced.
2. The reconciliation between the core and the financial ERP
Guidewire or its own core generates the accounting movements derived from insurance activity: premiums, claims, reinsurance and provisions.
The financial ERP manages general accounting, payments to suppliers, payroll and the monthly closing.
The reconciliation between the two systems is a monthly process that in many medium-sized insurers consume between 40 and 80 working hours of qualified profiles. [6]
Gartner estimates that only around 25% of medium-sized insurers have bidirectional real-time integration between their core and their accounting system. [5]
3. The mediator's portal: what exists and what doesn't
Large insurers have portals for mediators with real-time access to portfolios, quotes, claims status and documentation.
Median companies usually have something - a basic portal or extranet - that covers the contribution part, but not the relational part: the mediator cannot see the processing status of a client's claim, he cannot access his commission history in detail and, for any operational consultation, he calls the mediator service number.
Insurers that invest in digital expertise for mediators report reductions of around 30% in processing time. [3]
4. Non-standard claims approval workflows
The standard claims flow lives on in Guidewire. But around 15— 20% of claims have some characteristics that remove them from the standard flow: an amount higher than the expert's authorization threshold, discrepancy between the expert and the mediator, reclassification of coverage or cases with a legal component.
This percentage of claims generates a disproportionate amount of manual coordination by email between experts, lawyers, technical management and the claims team.
An exception management system connected to the core could have that process traced out; in most medium-sized insurers, it lives in the email history of five people.
5. The management reporting that management needs and the core does not generate
The combined ratio, the accident rate by branch, the average claim cost, the withholding ratio per broker and the margin by product: all these indicators are data that exist in the insurance company's systems.
But they are distributed between the core, the ERP, the HR tool. HH. and departmental spreadsheets.
57% of the time of employees in medium-sized insurers is spent coordinating and searching for information between non-integrated systems. [4]
The management dashboard that crosses all these indicators is built manually every month.
Guidewire solves the core of insurance.
What it leaves out is the operational layer that surrounds that core: the commercial network, financial reconciliation, claims that come out of the standard flow and management reporting that management needs to make decisions.
These processes don't disappear when Guidewire is implemented: they migrate to Excel, email, or parallel tools without Governance.
References
1. ICEA (Cooperative Research between Insurance Entities). (2024) .Statistics of the Spanish insurance sector. ICEA. — The Spanish insurance sector manages more than 300 million annual policies. The network of mediators (agents and brokers) accounts for around 65% of life insurance distribution and more than 50% of non-life insurance. The management of this network — training, certifications, commissions, related claims — is one of the operational areas with the greatest technological fragmentation.
2. UNESPA. (2024). Spanish Insurance Sector Report 2024. Spanish Union of Insurance and Reinsurance Entities. https://www.unespa.es — The Spanish insurance sector had a turnover of around €72 billion in premiums in 2024. Midsize insurers (100—1,000 employees) represent a significant part of the health, auto and home insurance market, often with core sectoral systems (Guidewire, Duck Creek, own core) that don't cover commercial network management.
3. Deloitte. (2024). 2024 Insurance Outlook. Deloitte Insights. https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/industries/financial-services/insurance-industry-outlook.html — Insurers that invest in digital expertise for mediators report reductions of around 30% in application processing time. The lack of a digital portal for mediators is one of the three most common technological gaps identified in medium-sized European insurers.
4. McKinsey & Company. (2024). Insurance in the age of AI. McKinsey Global Institute. — 57% of the time of employees in medium-sized insurers is spent coordinating and searching for information between non-integrated systems. Automating the reconciliation processes between the insurance core and the Financial ERP can reduce that time by around 40— 50%.
5. Gartner. (2024). Predicts 2025: Insurance Technology. Gartner Research. —Gartner identifies the integration between core insurance and financial systems (ERP) as the main technological challenge for medium-sized insurers in Europe. Only around 25% of medium-sized insurers have real-time bidirectional integration between their core and their accounting system.
6. MuleSoft (Salesforce). (2024). 2024 Connectivity Benchmark Report. MuleSoft. https://www.mulesoft.com/connectivity-benchmark — 51% of companies recognize that integration issues prevent them from taking advantage of their data. In the insurance industry, this translates into monthly manual reconciliation between the insurance core (Guidewire, Duck Creek) and the financial ERP, which consumes between 40 and 80 hours of qualified work per month in many organizations.
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