Equisoft is a global provider of digital insurance solutions and has been since 1994. Thirty years on, what has changed and how does the company keep evolving?
In July 2024, GNP Seguros began the process of implementing Equisoft’s cloud-based policy administration solution that uses OIPA (Oracle Insurance Policy Administration) as its core.
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With this implementation, GNP Seguros will continue its transformation, thanks to Equisoft, and offer innovative products.
This is the latest of Equisoft’s international moves this year, including opening an office in the Caribbean. How can a firm keep expanding like this?
LII speaks to Luis Romero, founder and CEO of Equisoft, on the firm’s maintained success and what comes next.
What is the mission statement of Equisoft? What is its purpose in the financial services sector?
Luis Romero: Our mission is to make financial services more accessible and faster to consumers and also to our clients. I understand it’s a broad statement, but this is our 30th anniversary and we’ve been very committed to this industry. We’ve embraced changes and evolution and that’s why we’re investing more and more in our R&D and product development arms.
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By GlobalDataHow do you achieve that mission statement? What is the advantage of choosing Equisoft over the last 30 years?
I always tell our team that first we sell trust and then we deliver knowledge. We are in a risk averse and very complex industry. It is not only a matter of having the best solution, but it is also having successful projects. By successful projects, I mean projects that work and work in a reasonable time period and at a reasonable cost. Only when you have all those ingredients together, do you have a successful project. We don’t take lightly the trust that comes from the executives that gets us these projects.
How hard is it to gain trust?
You need to show that you have the technology, you need to show that you have the team, not only during the sales cycle, but also have the team that will deliver projects. That used to be daunting when we were tiny but now we’re close to 1000 people and that makes a difference.
The customers have the opportunity to meet everyone; the sales team, the engineering team, the implementation team, the support team, our security team.
These long sales cycles end up being an advantage. They are costly, they can be painful and stressful, but ultimately that is how we show how we stand out. That is how we show we are committed. And now we have 300 financial institutions trusting us.
What are the benefits of being a global firm and what are the trickier aspects?
One of the benefits is that we have an onshore and an offshore model. We believe that’s a strength of the company.
We’re in a complicated business, life insurance is a complicated business. We can make simple products different to our competitors and, due to proximity, specialised to our customers.
We were founded in Canada and we expanded quickly in the US and other regions. If you are not able to expand globally, you’re a bit limited. This is an industry that moves slowly compared to other industries. Our ability to expand globally at scale is a clear advantage. But also we maintain the importance of having a team very close to our customers to understand the particularities of that client base.
What are the big digital insurance trends at the moment?
The reality is every company is selling a variation of the same products in this space globally. Regulation will be slightly different, there’s differences because of the demographics and the population but they’re the same products. Ultimately all the life insurers sell the same product to a client base that wants to protect their family.
The pandemic brought to light the fact that this was an industry that was behind in digitalisation and still working quite a bit with paper. Anything to have efficiency, more straight forward processing, as well as less and less friction is very, very important. Changing an address and things as simple as that still requires an agent on the phone and it should not be standard for every company. It is easier said than done because of legacy but anything that can help with that is very important.
Every conversation in the last year has centred on AI. Obviously, AI can be a huge accelerator, anything that can improve or ensure efficiencies is obviously a trend, particularly among our large customers. Customers that have millions of customers to service any any small improvement will be important, particularly that we’re expecting at least half of the workforce to to retire in the next 15 years. Anything that can help automate, not necessarily to reduce the staff in the short term but being able to keep up with the business is crucial.
