Content Management in the Insurance Industry

Nearly every aspect of the insurance industry is undergoing an unprecedented shift. Disruptive startups, evolving customer demands, burgeoning data availability and other factors are combining to upend the long-standing status quo. To add to the turmoil, the barriers to switching providers have never been lower.

Quotes are readily available, the purchase process is streamlined and new industry entrants are not viewed skeptically by consumers. To remain competitive, insurers need to offer digital experiences that convert prospects into customers and lead to long-term relationships.

Today, a successful digital experience is rooted in a content management system (CMS) that offers the appropriate range of features and functionality. WordPress and Drupal are two widely used CMS platforms that insurance organizations are likely to consider. Choosing a CMS with the right tools to build impactful content and experiences is crucial for success in today’s competitive insurance market.

Drupal vs. Wordpress: a team decision

Because they share the risk and the responsibility, insurance marketers, business leaders and developers should all participate in the CMS selection process. While each member of this decision-making group understands the importance of capitalizing on technology to improve engagement and build relationships, each member also brings a unique perspective and set of criteria to guide the process.

The business leader's criteria

Insurance industry business leaders understand they must prove the return on investment of a CMS purchase. Looking to the future, they must plan for scale, while also ensuring the organization is prepared to adopt technological advances such as AI–powered virtual agents.

The value of open source

One of the main advantages of open source platforms such as Drupal or WordPress is the absence of licensing fees, which can help lower the total cost of ownership. IT costs related to development, deployment and maintenance can be further minimized by taking advantage of cloud-computing technologies.

The value inherent in open source software has less to do with overall cost and more with freedom from the restrictions of proprietary software. The locked source code, slow release cycles and limited integrations typical of proprietary solutions can slow the process of change for insurers. Open source software unlocks endless doors to innovation.

Scalability vs. simplicity

Savvy insurance leaders are mindful of overgeneralizations like “WordPress is simple” and “Drupal is complex.” Instead, they conduct a like-for-like comparison between comparably sized sites with similar functionality or complexity.

Drupal has a longer learning curve than WordPress, largely due to its robust customization capabilities. But the importance placed on simplicity must be balanced with an analysis of scalability. For example, which CMS can scale the fastest to manage and govern multiple sites and applications? WordPress is simple to use, especially for blogs or small sites. But it’s not necessarily well suited for larger, more complex sites.

Conversely, Drupal is better suited for enterprise-level sites with custom requirements and may add unnecessary complexity if used for a small site or blog.

The marketer’s criteria

Insurance marketers are typically responsible for building loyalty with fickle insurance shoppers. For them, mandatory features in a CMS platform include support for personalization, a seamless behind-the- scenes authoring experience and the flexibility to connect with other systems in the martech stack.

A customer experience that builds loyalty

Insurance marketers understand that personalized experiences and tailored solutions lead to deeper relationships. With the Drupal platform, the options for creating those tailored customer journeys are endless. Drupal’s architecture makes it the ideal platform for creating and delivering segmented content.

The platform’s sophisticated content management capabilities enable marketers to define customer segments and automate the delivery of targeted, relevant information across multiple digital channels, ensuring that prospective and existing policyholders receive messaging uniquely aligned with their individual needs and preferences. This high degree of personalization not only enhances customer satisfaction but also increases retention rates, as insurance customers are more likely to remain loyal to brands that deliver responsive, contextually relevant digital experiences.

Drupal’s flexibility allows seamless integration with data analytics tools and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, providing marketers with actionable insights to continually refine their engagement strategies and optimize digital touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle.

WordPress lacks critical enterprise capabilities for customer engagement, mobility and multichannel platforms. Personalization functionality is available only by integrating a third-party solution.

Conversely, Drupal solutions like Acquia Personalization — optimized for Drupal — provide a streamlined path to personalization. 

Evaluating ease of use

Marketing teams demand the most intuitive interface for authoring content. They thrive on the ability to publish new cross-channel content quickly, easily and—whenever possible—without developer support.

Marketers generally find WordPress easy to use as a blogging and landing-page tool. The latest release of Drupal takes functionality further with the inclusion of Layout Builder, a powerful visual tool that empowers content authors to create one-off pages more efficiently, with drag-and-drop flexibility. The release also supports more advanced use cases like layout templates and workflows—all with a careful eye toward web accessibility.

Drupal also offers flexible integrations for all the tools in an insurer’s martech stack, as well as the SEO advantages of industry-leading caching technology.

With all the power of an enterprise CMS, Drupal also provides support for complex, customized editorial workflows.

The developer's criteria

The development team is responsible for building and supporting multiple experiences for the web and beyond. Outdated technology and complex data requirements are consistent pain points. As the primary technical stakeholders in the CMS decision, developers seek a secure, maintainable and flexible platform.

Data security

Today’s insurance IT professionals face the complex challenge of securing sensitive personal and financial data and keeping pace with evolving regulations and protocols. High-profile data breaches, like the Equifax cyberattack in 2017, have shaken consumer trust, further adding to the complexity.

All software has security vulnerabilities; the differentiation lies in the processes for mitigating and repairing these vulnerabilities.

An active open source project with defined processes for reporting and resolving security issues provides confidence and transparency. Having many “eyes” on the source code can allow more issues to be discovered and resolved.

The Drupal security team provides a mature process for maintaining security. Insurance organizations benefit from this collaborative environment as it enables rapid identification and remediation of vulnerabilities, thus minimizing risks to sensitive customer data. The frequent security audits and updates issued by the Drupal open source community ensure ongoing compliance with evolving regulatory standards, which is essential in the highly regulated insurance sector.

By leveraging the strengths of open source security frameworks, insurance providers can demonstrate a strong commitment to data protection and build trust with their clients.It’s important to note that, beyond the core WordPress offering, developers are responsible for managing the security of all the plugins in play. 

Experience management

Both WordPress and Drupal offer the ability to build in- demand custom solutions and customer experiences. For ultimate flexibility, developers may utilize a CMS to serve as the foundation for a modern decoupled architecture. This approach opens the door to a variety of potential programming languages and design philosophies to accomplish ambitious goals for insurance organizations. 

Using API-first Drupal to decouple the front end, Drupal offers sophisticated alternative frameworks for decoupled delivery. This focus on flexibility gives Drupal a definitive advantage over competitors like WordPress and, in decoupled delivery, Sitecore and Adobe.

“Our research demonstrates that companies that do not aggressively establish an enterprise-wide digital program will fall behind, leaving them vulnerable to traditional and nontraditional competitors.”

James Huffman, senior vice president, management solutions, LOMA

Drupal: A wider range of benefits

Leaders of insurance organizations considering a move to the Drupal platform will want to understand the advantages of the latest version of the platform.

Drupal represents a change both in the technology and in the benefits it provides to any insurance organization.

Improved architecture

In a significant change to the core architecture of the platform, the underlying function and class libraries have been replaced with a robust range of functionality, provided by Symfony. Because it is no longer confined to the Drupal community, the development ecosystem is more widely supported and developers from outside the community can ramp up more quickly.

Additionally, the large selection of existing classes/libraries speeds up development time for a range of features, including

Comprehensive Mobile-Friendliness

Recent statistics show that nearly 73% of global Google traffic now comes from mobile devices. Drupal was developed to provide a great mobile experience for site visitors and site administrators alike.

Rich media support for images, audio, videos and other files, including embed support for videos hosted externally (such as on YouTube or Vimeo), makes Drupal a robust media management platform. Media entities are editable and reusable across a site and contain additional data for categorization, display, storage and many other uses.

Drupal’s mobile-first design philosophy ensures that layouts and functionality remain responsive across a wide range of devices, which is critical for insurers aiming to deliver seamless digital experiences to their increasingly mobile-oriented customer base. The platform’s adaptive image handling and innovative caching strategies contribute to fast load times and reliable content delivery, even under fluctuating network conditions.

Insurance organizations leveraging Drupal can efficiently manage their digital assets while ensuring intuitive, consistent engagement for policyholders and prospects, regardless of device or location.

The integration of APIs using a variety of connections and protocols. Symfony also offers full cache-control at various levels, leading to a smoother, faster

Enhanced administration and workflow

Drupal includes a host of new tools for content and site administration. Adding an image or video now involves a media browser experience, making it easy to filter and search for the right item to insert, or to upload a new item.

Workspaces allow new content to be staged and finalized before being released to users. Contributed modules provide methods for scheduling content to be published (and unpublished), such as embargoed press releases or events.

Individual pages can be completely customized by using Layout Builder to select layout and content blocks as needed.

WordPress and Drupal both offer potential benefits and downsides in light of an insurance organization’s unique requirements. WordPress, despite a robust plug-in library, relatively lower costs and overall ease of use, falls short of meeting the requirements of enterprise-level insurance organizations. With a multifaceted capacity to deliver on experience management, Drupal provides the features and benefits of a true enterprise-level CMS.

While WordPress may have a shorter learning curve, Drupal offers the scalability needed for more complex, enterprise-level sites.

Drupal offers the robust personalization capabilities WordPress lacks.

Drupal incorporates powerful visual layout functionality and flexible integration of marketing tools, significantly outpacing the functionality WordPress offers in these areas.

The vast Drupal community and security team provides established processes for reporting and resolving security issues across functionalities. WordPress provides security management only for their core offering.

Finding the way

As insurance organizations work to keep pace with the changing needs, expectations and behaviors of customers and prospects, the selection of a content management platform will be vital to their success. Making the right CMS choice not only supports digital transformation but also enhances the overall customer journey, promoting sustained engagement and loyalty in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Factors such as scalability, security, an intuitive user interface, and the capacity for integration with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence should be weighed when evaluating available CMS and DXP platforms. In this dynamic landscape, platforms like Drupal and WordPress each present unique advantages that align with specific business requirements, but the ultimate goal is to create personalized, seamless experiences across all digital touchpoints.

Carefully analyzing both present and future needs will empower insurance industry leaders to select a solution capable of evolving alongside both technology and customer expectations.

The clear advantages that Drupal offers — increased security, flexibility and scalability — make it the ideal choice for any institution seeking to position itself as an innovative leader in digital experiences.