How insurers can take control of compliance before it controls them

By Jochem van der Veer

Compliance in insurance isn’t only about meeting regulatory requirements - it’s about maintaining trust, mitigating risk and ensuring operational efficiency. Yet many insurers still struggle to keep up with compliance. Disjointed compliance processes slow down decision-making, create unnecessary costs, and increase exposure to legal and financial risk.

A recent study found that 41% of business leaders rarely involve other departments in decision-making. This leads to inefficiencies and fragmented oversight. In the insurance world, this disconnect can result in regulatory breaches, costly fines and a diminished customer experience.

Compliance is a constant challenge for insurance agents and professionals who handle policies, claims and customer interactions. Staying ahead of evolving regulations remains difficult - not because of a lack of data, but because critical compliance efforts remain disconnected. Journey management changes that. It provides a structured, data-driven approach that unifies teams and links compliance requirements to customer interactions and claims processes in real time. By creating a single, actionable view, insurers can move beyond tracking regulations to proactively managing them across the entire policyholder journey.

Where it breaks down

Every department within an insurance company, from underwriting to claims processing, has its own compliance obligations. But when these teams work in isolation, insurers lose valuable time and visibility. Regulatory changes require swift action, but fragmented processes make it difficult to adapt in real time. Compliance teams often rely on outdated reporting structures and disconnected workflows, creating blind spots that lead to delays, errors, and financial penalties.

This lack of alignment doesn’t just impact compliance - it affects customer outcomes too. A disjointed approach can lead to slow claims processing, policy approval delays and inconsistent communication with policyholders.

Executives estimate that only 45% of business data is fully used in decision-making. This means that nearly half of an insurer’s available data is ignored when making strategic compliance decisions. Without a structured framework to connect requirements across the entire policyholder journey, insurers risk making reactive decisions rather than informed ones.

Bringing compliance into focus with journey management

Solving compliance challenges isn’t as simple as hiring more auditors or adding another layer of oversight - in fact, this can exacerbate the silos. The root issue is a lack of visibility and alignment. Journey management provides insurers with a centralized framework to track, manage and enforce requirements across all policyholder interactions. Instead of treating compliance as a separate function, journey management embeds it into the core of operations.

When compliance is integrated into the insurance journey, every team - whether it handles underwriting, claims or customer service - follows the same compliance road map. Instead of operating in silos, insurers connect all compliance-related processes within a single, structured framework. This eliminates inconsistencies and ensures that policies are applied uniformly, making it easier to monitor, track and adapt to regulatory requirements. With clear accountability, compliance responsibilities are mapped to specific teams and processes, reducing errors and oversights.

Fixing the bottlenecks that slow insurers down

One of the biggest frustrations for insurers is that compliance requirements often slow down operations. When insurers struggle to maintain efficiency, customer trust suffers. Delivering a fast, seamless customer experience is even more critical in the insurance space. Policyholders filing claims are often in high-stress, emotionally charged situations - whether dealing with an accident, property damage or a medical emergency. Any friction in the process only adds to clients’ frustration, making speed and ease of service essential for both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Strict regulations mean added paperwork, approval bottlenecks and delays in processing policies or claims.

But compliance and efficiency don’t have to be at odds. Journey management helps insurers embed compliance tracking directly into their existing processes, reducing administrative burdens while maintaining regulatory integrity.

How can compliance and efficiency work together? In claims processing, for example, errors frequently stem from inconsistent documentation and poor visibility into past claims decisions. With a structured journey management approach, insurers track claims compliance in real time, ensuring that all necessary regulatory steps are followed at every stage. This reduces errors, improves documentation accuracy and enhances regulatory reporting without creating additional manual work.

Regulatory adaptability is another critical challenge. When new regulations take effect, insurers often scramble to update their processes across multiple departments. Journey management eliminates this friction by allowing insurers to adjust compliance workflows in real time, ensuring that new regulations are seamlessly integrated without major disruptions. Instead of reacting to compliance challenges, insurers become proactive — adapting faster while maintaining full oversight.

Making compliance a competitive advantage

Journey management is no longer just an operational strategy – it’s a competitive advantage. The level of complexity in compliance is likely to grow. Insurers that rely on outdated, fragmented compliance processes will struggle to keep up. Journey management offers a scalable, structured approach, ensuring that insurers can adapt to regulatory changes while improving efficiency and customer trust.

Instead of treating compliance as a burden, insurers that implement journey management turn it into a competitive advantage. By integrating compliance into every step of the insurance journey, they move beyond reactive decision-making and create a proactive, streamlined strategy that reduces risk, improves efficiency and strengthens policyholder relationships.

The insurers that embrace journey management won’t only reduce compliance risks, they’ll set new standards for operational excellence and long-term success in a rapidly changing industry.