With the help of insurance automation, internal processing time would be lessened by 80%. Customers can now expect prompt responses from their insurers for any given situation. Whether they’re applying for a new insurance policy or making a claim, the fast and reliable performance automation provides has become the standard for customer service.

But even with all this information, there are still many financial companies that have not yet fully realized the potential benefits that insurance automation can offer their business. In this article, we’ll cover the meaning of insurance automation, the benefits it provides, in what cases can you use it, and how it supports sustainable growth for the company.

Summary

It’s true that robotic process automation will likely reshape the future of the insurance industry and those who do not adapt to the change will not survive in their current form. 

Over the years, insurance companies realize that they need to forge stronger relationships with customers to stay profitable and competent. Hence why they’ve turned to digital solutions such as Robotic Process Automation in insurance or RPA to lessen the highly repetitive and operational tasks insurers have to face daily. A few of the benefits that come along with RPA insurance services are (1) cut costs/drive efficiency, (2) enterprise scalability, (3) improve the customer experience, (4) drive sales growth, (5) fraud detection, and (6) reduce human error. 

Insurance automation can be used to automate mundane tasks such as candidate pre-qualification, claims processing, policy management, regulatory compliance, and underwriting without missing any important details. For ambitious companies that want to stay ahead of the competition, insurance automation supports sustainable growth through automation scales and effortlessly aligns with all of your business goals. 

 

What Is Insurance Automation?

Insurance automation is a tool used to streamline all of the insurance processes such as marketing, renewals, and sales—one of the popular tools used in insurance automation is RPA. 

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is traditional software automation. Similar to live customer agents, these robots are used to take on time-consuming tasks such as extracting important data, sending pre-made paperwork to clients, navigate systems, streamlining the underwriting process, filtering emails, and automatically update the customer’s file. 

The reality is that using robots to drive tangible business benefits has become the new norm for various business sectors. What used to be a paper-heavy task can now be automated thanks to the Robotic Process Automation (RPA).  

Benefits Of Insurance Automation

According to Deloitte US, “Using robots to drive tangible business benefits is very much a reality today: The IT-enabled RPA market has been growing rapidly at a CAGR of 60.5% from 2014 and is expected to reach US$5 billion by 2020.”

While RPA is just the first step, automation is expected to be driven by cognitive technologies in insurance. Analytic capabilities that enable machines to “think” and perform tasks that are commonly designed for humans are being implemented in robotics today. 

Cognitive software tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and others are used to fuel a simple insurance chatbot and turn it into an intelligent, self-processing machine. The collaboration of human intelligence and advanced machines are used to enhance jobs and eliminate repetitive tasks which resulted to:

  1. Cut costs/drive efficiency

Insurance firms are known to manage large amounts of data. If human representatives are the only force available for processing these data, then this might take more time and money to get things done.

In order to promote long-term success in a highly competitive marketplace, insurance automation is the best solution. Automation in insurance is widely adopted by companies that are looking to increase their rates and automate time-consuming activities that will help them cut costs and drive the efficiency of their services. 

There is no doubt that Robotic Process Automation in insurance can help insurers increase their profits, enhance the growth of their company, provide better compliance, and drastically improve their customer service—all at a lower cost.

  1. Enterprise scalability 

Robotic Process Automation in insurance allows industries to scale the growth of their business without being hampered. By implementing insurance automation, companies can expect: 

      • Accuracy to increase by 80-90% 

      • Speed response delivery by 80%

      • Lowering the overall costs of automated tasks by 40% and magnifying the business efficiency and profitability by 50%

Insurance companies that invested in RPAs can expect a 100% return within just the first year of implementation. In addition, the more bots a company adds, the more likely the profit will multiply in the years to follow. 

  1. Improve the customer experience

Dramatically improving customer experience is one of the benefits companies love about automation in insurance. Although, one important detail you should remember is that Robot Process Automation (RPA) is different from Artificial Intelligence (AI)—they are two independent tools. 

RPA is a traditional automation tool that can not think on its own. It only relies on rules and it doesn’t have intelligent reasoning that only an AI chatbot can provide. On the contrary, when RPA in insurance is fuelled by AI, then it unlocks a new set of possibilities for insurance companies and enterprises everywhere. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is responsible for the time-freeing features of an AI-powered RPA; It provides sufficient intelligence that makes RPA human-like. AI allows a simple bot to learn, grow, and adapt to any given circumstance without the assistance of a human representative.

These AI-powered robots are used to emulate human actions through software learning tools such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Machine Learning (ML), and other robotics software. 

Once these robots make use of all the benefits these learning tools provide, they convert the information into calculated analytics that enables the developers to personalize the robot based on their client’s user profiles and past user behavior—this makes artificial intelligence-powered robots the best candidates when automating insurance processes.

Whenever the power of AI is incorporated into a basic traditional robot, it becomes the ultimate powerhouse that helps companies increase customer experience and revenue over time.  

  1. Drive sales growth

For companies to move forward with their sales, automation is the best way to go. RPA in insurance eliminates human error and improves the accuracy of the data being processed. As a result, the tool produces useful insights that will help company leaders to generate and validate hypotheses to assist in decision-making that will eventually drive sales over time. 

  1. Fraud detection

Due to modern technology, essential documents like insurance claims can be easily copied and faked. There have been cases that an employee has accidentally overlooked these crucial documents and cost the company more money than they were willing to pay for. 

RPA has the ability to pre-scan documents sent by the customer such as a notice of loss claim to ensure that it is valid. It makes use of fraud detection algorithms that will notify the insurer if the documents sent are valid or not. 

  1. Reduce human error 

Like what we were pointing out earlier, errors cost money—lots of money. Human error isn’t new to the insurance industry. Companies have lost millions of dollars just because of a single human error. Insurance companies that continue to let human error affect their strategy from the inside out might face much bigger trouble than just losing millions of dollars; in some cases, mistakes can lead to a lawsuit and permanent damage to the business’s reputation.  

RPA in insurance is designed to help with managing the increasing demands from policyholders, customers, and other partners without breaking a sweat—making the risk of errors much lesser compared to humans. It’s fast, transparent, and available in multiple channels to maximize every opportunity and enhance customer experience with little to no mistakes. 

Examples Of Insurance Automation Use Cases 

  1. Pre-qualification

Insurance automation has the ability to analyze a candidate for pre-qualification. Modern insurance companies are using analytical engines and software to generate a unified view of their customers’ profiles. This means the robot is intelligently aiding the insurer on their customer calls.

  1. Claims processing

Even though it’s time-consuming, having fast and efficient claims processing is the prime success of an insurance company. On average, claim processing would take at least 3-5 days and it would take a few more days for the insurer to review the data such as: 

      • For Health Insurance and Life Insurance Claims: Valid medical certificates and medical reports. 

      • For Automobile Insurance Claim: Photographs of the damaged vehicles, police or accident reports, and driver’s license. 

      • For Travel Loss Claim: Flight boarded passes, records, and photos of the damaged baggage

Investing in AI-powered RPA insurance services can make the claims processing workflow much easier; it automates the claims intake, assessment, and settlement. 

For manual claims processing, it would take about a week to complete. Automation makes the data available in just a few minutes. 

  1. Policy management 

RPA insurance services can also be used in the whole cycle of policy management operations, including policy updates and policy issuance. 

Pre-underwriting checks, updating internal systems, and communicating with the customer demand a lot of manual work. RPA insurance services can be used to automate every step of the policy issuance, thus drastically reducing the time and work that insurers used to do manually. 

  1. Regulatory compliance

Complying with the government’s policies and regulations is mandatory for insurance companies. Although, amendments to these regulations frequently require insurers to re-construct their business processes and adapt to the vital change—even if it means creating permanent financial and operational damages to the company. 

The solution to helping insurance companies enhance and improve their compliance is an AI-powered insurance bot. Automation in insurance completely removes the need for agents to go through the operations manual. It allows companies to ensure the accuracy of their data and monitor regulatory compliances in real-time.

  1. Underwriting

Automation in insurance doesn’t have to be limited to the basics—it also involves advanced features such as gathering and analyzing essential information from multiple sources to underwrite the risks that are connected to the chosen policy such as health risks and financial limits. 

Taxing tasks such as reviewing the history of the customers’ claims, assessment of loss runs, data collection, and generating recommendations based on previous losses can also be done in a few minutes with the help of RPA insurance services. 

 

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How Insurance Automation Supports Sustainable Growth

  1. Automation scales

Insurance companies are known to move slower compared to other industries because of their high regulations. But since customers are moving at exceptional rates, insurance companies are forced to adapt to the new norm. 

AI-powered RPA insurance services and insurance chatbots have the potential to help companies enhance and transform their business by making it become more profitable and seamlessly adjust to market changes. Features that provide growth opportunities for insurance companies are:

      • Read and scan data

      • Verify insurance period

      • Flag mismatch/errors in data

      • Data entry into key systems

      • Download policyholder data from multiple sources

  1. Aligns with your business goals

There is no doubt that RPA in insurance can be aligned with any business goal. In fact, more and more insurers have claimed that RPA has helped them reduce costs and improve processing time for their policies—resulting in overjoyed customers and improved internal productivity.

Take this shared service provider as an example: 

Shared Services Arm of Major European Insurance Group (part of one of the largest insurance groups in the world) understood that automation was the right solution to solve the tremendous pressure of their shared service operation. 

The automation didn’t fail and added more value to their services by:

      • 80% reduction in internal processing time

      • 70% reduction in end-to-end cycle times

      • 23% improvement in SLA for Front Line Phone calls, from 73% to 96% year-on-year

      • 75% reduction in overtime despite unprecedented 2018 weather events

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