The amount that I despise the overuse of corporate jargon and industry buzzwords is complicated by the fact that I use them… a lot. And with that said, we’re going to keep going on my absolute favorite trending topic; digital transformation.
The other week, I wrote about how insurance leaders should balance short term results with long term planning to win in AI. This strategy of producing quick wins to maintain support and momentum for larger digital transformation projects is critical for your digital transformation as a whole, so I wanted to keep pulling the thread.
Quick wins, low hanging fruit, agile management. Whatever name we call it, the phrasing always makes it sound easy when, in reality, it’s not. Sure a quick win sounds good, but what happens when the software solution you need for those quick wins is more expensive than you had budgeted for? You can take a lighter weight, less expensive version, sure, but now you don't have every feature you need. The same goes for buying off the shelf software versus building something in house.
This is a constant challenge, and is especially prevalent when you are considering whether to buy a solution or build your own. There is, however, a middle ground. Low code and no code tools promise to reduce the technical barrier to building products and systems, and their efficacy has been greatly enhanced by recent developments in AI. Let’s dive into the promise of low code tools, and how insurance companies can use them to generate quick wins and long term value.
Market pressures to digitize, including digitally native new entrants, quickly transforming competitors, and rising customer expectations can cause us to move too fast or to become paralyzed by doing too much at once. While most companies have had conversations around digital transformation and likely have some priorities, the question of “how?” remains
Sure, you might have an idea of what needs to be done, and maybe even a very clear picture of your organization’s digital future, but how do you actually get there? It’s not as simple as picking the software solutions you want off the shelf. Your business is unique, and your systems to operate as you do should also be unique.
With integrations and APIs driving more configurability, the era of massive standalone software solutions is coming to an end. Integrations provide more customizability over your suite of systems, but building your own tools and workflows offers the next level of customization.
Gone are the days when development costs were totally prohibitive to building applications of your own. Building exactly what you need on time and on budget is now accessible to everyone. Visual development platforms and workflow builders like Onlook and Feathery can give carriers and brokers a shortcut to speed, data quality, and continuous experimentation.
With that said, I wanted to share some of my favorite tools for you to check out:
Onlook is a live visual editor for React apps; users can visually edit applications and write changes back to the code repository in real time. This allows closer collaboration between design and development teams without the technical overhead of traditional software development. Compared to Cursor, which is great for building more sophisticated backend functionality, Onlook is perfect for creating customer facing front end applications.
For insurance organizations, Onlook enables you to really build anything, allowing rapid UI tweaks and updates on client or agent portals, websites, or dashboards. Marketing & product teams can also A/B-test copy, layout, and micro-interactions without full development cycles. Fewer context-switches for engineers and shorter review cycles with compliance leads to more features shipped and a faster digital transformation overall.
Data is the key to the insurance business, and it is also the key to digital transformation. Clean, quality data that is accessible by our core systems will improve decision making, profitability, and the success of technical developments. Feathery enables end-to-end modular data intake workflows. Their AI-powered digital experiences help insurance companies automate client onboarding, risk assessment, and more. Their flexible routing of data also helps streamline underwriting data intake, automatically sending information where it needs to be in your workflow automatically. This allows underwriters to spend time on risk analysis, not data entry.
Better data → sharper pricing, faster quote/bind, stronger loss ratios.
Low-code isn’t magic pixie dust—your transformation still needs structure, discipline, and a few guardrails. Here’s the quick-and-dirty playbook I lean on whenever a team rolls out a tool like Onlook or Feathery and wants to see wins now without blowing up tech‐risk:
Get those four habits right and low-code moves from a shiny experiment to a dependable engine: faster releases, cleaner data, happier customers, and a team that still has energy left for the next big idea. In other words—exactly the kind of “quick win” that keeps digital transformation from turning into just another corporate buzzword.