Welcome, subscribers, to this issue of Insurance Business Review.
Customer experience has become a defining competitive factor for insurance carriers and agencies. Speed and trust during service interactions can determine whether a policyholder renews or begins shopping elsewhere.
One factor that’s increasingly shaping that experience is bilingual support. As the U.S. insurance market becomes more linguistically diverse, the ability to communicate clearly in a customer’s preferred language is becoming a core operational capability. About 67 million people in the United States speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish being the most common non-English language spoken nationwide.
In this edition, we examine how bilingual support is reshaping customer experience in insurance operations, and why more carriers and agencies are treating language capability as a strategic service function rather than a simple staffing preference.
Customer Experience Trends Leaders Should Watch:
U.S. Insurers Are Expanding Language Access for a Growing Multilingual Population
U.S. insurers are increasingly investing in bilingual support as the country becomes more linguistically diverse. This shift is pushing insurers to rethink how they communicate with policyholders, from call center support to translated policy documents and digital content.
Technology Rollouts Show How Easy It Is to Get Multilingual CX Wrong
While many organizations are investing in AI to improve multilingual support, implementation mistakes can quickly undermine customer trust. In one widely reported incident, a Washington state hotline’s Spanish option mistakenly delivered English audio in a Spanish accent due to an AI voice configuration error.
Language Access Policy Shifts Could Impact Service Expectations
Recent federal moves to designate English as the official U.S. language have reversed prior guidance promoting multilingual access. Limited English proficiency disproportionately affects Hispanic and Asian populations, highlighting how changes in language policy could reduce support resources and increase barriers to services like insurance coverage, claims, and policy information.
Nearshoring Gains Traction as U.S. Labor Shortages Persist
With 8.8 million U.S. job openings and only 6.3 million unemployed workers, companies are increasingly looking abroad to fill talent gaps. Nearshoring to Latin America offers cultural fit and competitive wages, helping insurers maintain service and customer experience without expanding domestic headcount.
Boost Customer Experience with Bilingual Support
Learn how Proxima’s nearshore teams help insurers scale service and improve response times, all without adding domestic headcount.
Bilingual Support Is Becoming an Operational Requirement
Insurance conversations are rarely simple. Policyholders often need help understanding coverage limitations, deductible structures, regulatory requirements, or the claims process. When those discussions happen across language barriers, misunderstandings can lead to frustration, delayed decisions, and unnecessary escalations.
Bilingual support teams help remove this. Customers are able to discuss policies, endorsements, or claims in the language they’re most comfortable using, which improves comprehension and confidence in the interaction. Research consistently shows that customers prefer interacting in their native language, with up to 76% of non-native English speakers preferring vendors that provide support in their primary language.
For agencies and carriers, the operational benefits extend beyond customer satisfaction. Clearer communication reduces repeat calls, speeds up issue resolution, and improves first-contact resolution rates, key drivers of service efficiency in high-volume insurance environments.
Faster Service, Fewer Escalations
Language barriers often create hidden operational inefficiencies inside insurance service teams.
When communication isn’t clear, routine service tasks can quickly become complicated. Policyholders may need multiple calls to resolve the same issue, documentation may be misunderstood, and service teams frequently escalate cases that could have been resolved at the first point of contact.
In fact, linguistic complexity can cause 10% to 25% of insurance records to become unreliable due to misinterpretation or translation gaps, increasing operational risk and administrative workload.
Bilingual support reduces this friction by enabling service representatives to handle customer needs more effectively from the start. Policy changes, billing questions, and claims updates can be explained more clearly, which leads to faster resolution times and fewer escalations to senior staff.
In practice, this allows agencies and carriers to scale service capacity without proportionally increasing internal workload.
Supporting Producers and Agency Relationships
Bilingual service teams also improve the experience for insurance producers. Agents rely on fast service responses to maintain quoting momentum and support client needs.
When service teams can communicate with both producers and policyholders in multiple languages, it becomes easier to coordinate policy changes, clarify underwriting requirements, and move applications through the pipeline efficiently.
This operational support helps producers stay focused on selling while ensuring that service issues don’t slow down quoting activity or policy servicing.
Why This Matters
For many insurance organizations, the challenge lies in finding the talent.
Hiring bilingual service representatives domestically has become increasingly difficult due to labor shortages and rising costs. At the same time, the opportunity is expanding: over 44 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home, representing one of the fastest-growing consumer segments in the insurance market.
Nearshore outsourcing models have emerged as a practical solution, providing access to bilingual professionals who are trained in insurance workflows and operate in overlapping U.S. business hours.
This approach allows carriers and agencies to expand service capacity while maintaining the communication quality and responsiveness that policyholders expect.
Scale Efficiently with Nearshore Talent
See how your agency can leverage bilingual, nearshore professionals to reduce bottlenecks, increase conversions, and enhance customer satisfaction.