Jerry Wallis, Head of Industry Strategy, SS&C Blue Prism
With unprecedented events causing disruption across a variety of industries, this has accelerated a digital transformation throughout business and industry sectors. But with increased digitalization comes increased customer expectations and a premium standard that all customers look for between competitors.
A variety of long-established insurance companies must continue to maintain decades-old legacy systems that support books of insurance that cannot easily, or cost-effectively, be replaced. Having customer data stored in multiple different systems makes it very difficult for an insurer to build a single 360-degree view of a customer, to serve them better and to sell them more.
While businesses in various industries have sped up their digital transformations to meet the demands of an online world, the tie to these legacy silos has meant the insurance industry has historically been slow to move into a truly digital way or working. The average underwriter, for instance, continues to spend more than 50% of their workday on repetitive tasks.
The sector is under tremendous pressure to process information faster, better, and cheaper to meet the changing needs of today’s customers and secure long-term competitiveness. The adoption of advanced technologies, namely intelligent automation (IA), is helping insurers overcome this challenge by changing how the industry operates across every aspect of the value chain – from product development, underwriting, and policy management, to claims and other processes.
Digitalization and IA control the fate of future prospects for insurers’
The rise of intelligent automation has brought about a new era of possibilities for the insurance industry, with an impressive range of benefits. The introduction of IA and its respective technologies into an insurance firm represents the future of what can become a much more technologically advanced sector. This is particularly important as the industry is under increasing pressure to not only reduce costs but to also maintain, and take steps to improve, customer satisfaction.
Intelligent automation adoption can help resolve this by unifying disparate silos of data, presenting users with a single, digitally capable view of customers, thus giving them the time they need to focus on complex customer cases and the ability to utilize IA to deliver superior, bespoke customer service. IA is a combination of components, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), business process management and other complementary technologies that enable companies to advance workflows and streamline end-to-end processes.
Digital labour helps workers by automating repetitive and mundane tasks, freeing people from repetitive and time-consuming work. Digital workers connect to legacy or modern applications to automate business processes through a variety of automation techniques.
Intelligent document processing allows insurance firms to process vast amounts of data with minimal human intervention at an over 98% rate of accuracy. This replaces laborious and error-prone data entry, which is not only slow but creates an inefficient and costly domino effect when information is input incorrectly. Artificial intelligence components can then use this information to provide valuable insights, predictive analytics and modeling regarding customers and their policies, and suggestions for optimizing processes.
Business process management provides digital oversight, enabling employees to know exactly where in the workflow items are and what needs to be completed to get tasks to completion. Intelligent process mining identifies areas that would benefit from automation, transforming the end-to-end processing of work.
Overall, these IA technologies work together to streamline business processes, reduce operational costs, and improve the accuracy and speed of services. Using IA delivers key benefits for insurance firms, which include:
Faster claims processing – IA can automate many of the tasks involved in processing insurance claims. For example, it can read and analyze claims documents (including handwritten documents), determine whether a claim is valid, and calculate the amount of compensation owed. This can help insurers process claims more quickly, reducing the time it takes for customers to receive their payouts.
Enhanced customer experience – The introduction of chatbots powered by natural language processing can answer customer queries and resolve simple issues. This frees up customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues, improving overall service levels. Predictive analytics help workers identify customer needs and preferences to better personalize products and services. Automated notifications can be used to notify customers of policy renewals, claim status updates, and other important information. This can help improve customer satisfaction by keeping them informed in real time.
Better risk assessment – By analyzing large amounts of data, the AI features of intelligent automation can identify patterns and make predictions about future events as well as customers. This can help insurers to price policies more accurately and avoid underwriting risks that may otherwise be too high.
More efficient underwriting – By automating tasks involved in underwriting policies, insurers can improve efficiencies and productivity. For example, IA can analyze customer data to determine their risk profile, check for policy compliance, and generate policy documents. BPM ensures the underwriting process moves along to completion efficiently. This efficiency reduces the time and costs involved in underwriting policies, allowing insurers to process more policies in less time.
Enhanced fraud detection – By analyzing large amounts of data, intelligent automation’s AI capabilities can identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate fraudulent behavior. This can help insurers detect and prevent fraud before it occurs, reducing the amount of money lost to fraud.
Creating a strong workforce with the assistance of IA
Another benefit of introducing IA is that insurers can develop and improve their workers’ skillsets to match the needs of an increasingly digitalized world. Insurers can also recruit new talent that is interested in learning about advanced technology. Team members that were once spending their days completing repetitive, time-consuming tasks, can be trained in the latest IA technologies to establish them as customer-focused underwriters.
Improvements in efficiency, skillsets, and recruitment help insurers build stronger workforces.
IA is here to stay
Don’t make the mistake of assuming the benefits of IA are confined to the big-league, multinational, insurance players. Intelligent automation is for all in the industry– from agencies and specialty insurers to regional insurers and – yes – multinationals.
Intelligent automation technologies provide smaller and mid-size businesses with the possibility to overcome staffing and upscaling challenges, allowing them to become more competitive within the industry, whilst also optimising revenues. Whilst IA notably improved efficiency throughout businesses, it can also aid insurers in innovating and creating new products or services quickly and effectively. An expanding product and service offering will allow smaller businesses to stay abreast of competitors and meet the adapting needs of consumers. But, in order to make this work, companies must prioritise digital transformation within their business strategy, proving they can adapt and evolving to a rapidly changing market, ensuring their growth and expansion in the future.
