By Neil Murphy, Global VP at ABBYY
There are still many industries that are document and paper heavy in their processes and the insurance industry is one of them. It’s certainly true that prior to the pandemic, digital transformation was well underway in the insurance industry, but the last year has accelerated the need for technology and it has shone a light on the importance of insurers taking a new digital approach to underwriting.
To be frank, paper forms in today’s digital world are archaic, why should insurers be filing through documents when intelligent automation can do the job for them? One thing’s for certain, continuing to use manual processes will not drive the level of profitable premium growth that insurers need to thrive. Even for companies who were already working in the modern era of automated underwriting, there were many processes that fell through the cracks. As a result, insurers have had to pivot to manage virtual interactions and exchanges between all stakeholders in the process. In fact, Deloitte forecasted that, post-pandemic, historical data may be less valuable to the underwriting process, insurers might face unexpected spikes in claims, and insurers who take an agile approach to risk assessment might be more resilient than those who do not.
This is where process intelligence comes in: it can help insurers see their processes in real-time, spot bottlenecks, and identify where data is missing. So, how can insurance leaders make the most out of their technology investments to accelerate their underwriting transformations?
Embrace document AI
Automated underwriting within itself is nothing new, and while it’s a step in the right direction and can process lots of data at once, there is still a large amount of content that is creating vulnerability. In turn, cracks can form in the system. In fact, since the pandemic, there have been several examples of gaps and broken processes that have emerged. One insurance carrier, for example, focused process automation on improving the customer experience, while gearing up for automation at scale. However, when employees began working from home, operational processes supporting critical outcomes became difficult and many were simply broken.
Insurers are flooded with copious amounts of data in various forms every day. As soon as data enters automated underwriting – whether for personal lines, commercial, or life – it feeds into many manual processes. This can result in a delay in the process, an incorrect decision, or both. In today’s digital age, companies may have automated systems in place for their structured data, but they lack artificial intelligence (AI) solutions capable of addressing the volume of unstructured data from documents.
With more consumers preferring to engage digitally, there is now an even greater emphasis to accelerate the digitisation of content and business processes across the front, middle, and back office. The significant gap between customer expectations and insurer’s abilities is driving insurers to push for better connections, including their people, processes, and customers.
Understand your processes before you start
There is no doubt that digital transformation has revolutionised customer relationships. But the journey is yet to be complete, as many insurers are still struggling to identify which automation technologies would benefit their customers experiences the best. The first step to achieving this is having a better understanding of their current document-driven processes.
This is where process intelligence come in. Process intelligence can help insurance companies gain an oversight into the businesses. This includes discovering in real-time where bottlenecks occur, where repetition happens, where data is missing, and where automation is working or not. It can also see the flow of documents and their data through your processes, identifying exactly where automation – additional technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Machine Learning (ML) – can make the biggest impact. Too often, business leaders simply guess which processes would be best to automate without leveraging real data.
For the best results, it’s more than just one type of technology like RPA tools. By introducing content intelligence, AI that understands documents, combined with RPA solutions, businesses can quickly improve process bottlenecks, strengthen operational efficiencies, and enhance the customer journey. Not only this, but employees can focus on meaningful and creative responsibilities within the workplace, rather than wasting time on admin-heavy tasks. Essentially, content intelligence solutions are now enabling enterprises to make unstructured content more valuable and equip AI-powered robots with the necessary skills and understanding to make intelligent business decisions.
Gain digital intelligence
By marrying process and content intelligence solutions together, companies can speedily process a variety of documents while simultaneously automating insurance processes to gain comprehensive digital intelligence. Implementation of intelligent solutions to underwriting can significantly speed up functions such as data collection from both external and internal sites, assessment of loss runs and engineering reports, reviewing the history of customers’ claims and producing recommendations based on previous losses.
By having a strategic, holistic approach in place, insurance companies can reap the near-term rewards across the board and set the pace for the industry for years to come. Looking ahead, the potential for intelligent automation in the industry is limitless.
