The insurance industry was one of the first to witness widespread adoption of robotic process automation (RPA). The industry’s repetitive, rules-based, and document-heavy business processes make it an ideal candidate for automation. Many companies are now experiencing tangible benefits from RPA and the technology has a lot more to offer.
Anyone involved in any of the key insurance processes — underwriting, claims registration and processing, policy issuance and renewals, or, even, month-end reporting—know just how many pieces of information from many different sources are involved. It’s an industry that relies on its back-office processes and those processes are increasingly inundated, slow, and inefficient. For many companies, the challenge isn’t acquiring new customers, it’s servicing them properly. Contact centres are at full capacity and struggling to meet demand.
RPA is also lower cost and lower risk, and offers insurance companies a non-invasive way to automate core processes. For an industry that is burdened with repetitive and mundane tasks, automation provides a stable solution to increase organisational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and profitability. The productive impact of robotic process automation in insurance manifests itself with multiple facets. We introduce and briefly discuss five crucial ones.
1. Streamlined Data Processes
Insurance firms need to handle large amounts of data. If human employees are the only available option for data processing, this may take a lot of time and just as much money. Moreover, it leaves space for error which may increase even more the amount of time and money expenditures. But automation is an alternative that can do away with such disadvantages.
RPA makes data processes run more smoothly, let alone faster and error proof. The end result is a much more efficient data processing. This also has a corollary which should not be neglected, namely less bored, and thus more productive employees working on nonrepetitive, skilful tasks.
2. Integration of various systems and software
Innovation in the realm of insurance comes with a price, which may be quite costly. Yet no one can deny the necessity of IT improvement and technological development at all levels. Robotic process automation seems like the right solution to handle innovation properly.
It is ‘a proven technology that brings tangible benefits to the companies that deploy it and provides a means for companies to remain cost competitive in their market sphere’. RPA can easily handle the challenges of system updates and makes integration of the new much easier because it is consistent with the so-called “legacy systems”. As a result, it may lower the costs as well as the human expenditures involved in system and software updates.
3. Increased Compliance
Compliance with privacy regulations, and, relatedly, handling audits - both internal and external - are top requirements for insurance firms. The need to stay updated with the ever-changing laws that prescribe how privacy should be protected, increases the importance of the problem.
Robotic process automation can help a whole lot in this area as well. Because the software generates detailed logs of all transactions, it becomes much easier to track the processes and ensure that compliance with the regulations is in place. External audits thus become much less of an issue for insurance companies that make effective use of automation.
4. Increased Compliance
Robotic process automation may be seen as setting an insurance firm on an ascending path. Since software robots never get tired or bored, automated processes may be used 24/7, 365 days a year without fear of error interference. This means that RPA increases a company’s work capacity without any additional costs, neither financial nor with respect to quality.
Should new projects require additional skills and increased execution capacity, more robots can simply be “allowed into the field” without the hassle of training and re-training them every time. The equation seems to be very simple: robotic process automation in insurance equals more and better work for constant expenditure. And the best part comes when we acknowledge that this translates into maximally realising a firm’s potential for long-term growth.
5. Customer Experience
The impact of robotic process automation on insurance customer experience is twofold. On the one hand, RPA is very likely to significantly improve the customer experience by expediting and simplifying the claim process and thus making the customer more satisfied with the services.
Deloitte nicely points out this double-sided benefit of RPA in insurance: “Leveraging the plethora of capabilities offered by such tools, insurers can now design customer journeys from scratch rather than simply replicating existing journeys that are at best yesterday's stories with merely a bit more processing efficiency”. Not only does this improve customers’ experience with the insurance firm (which has a great potential for long-term growth), but it is also likely to bring about happier and more fulfilled human staff.
RPA use cases for the Insurance Industry
-
No Claim Bonus Management
- New Policy Issuance
- General Ledger Reconciliation
- Payment Reconciliation
- Invoice Creation
- Insurance Receipt Updation
- Tax Compliance
Regulatory compliance data
collection
- NTU Automation
- Group Policy Issuance
- Endorsement Processing
- Reconciliation Process
- Premium Accounting
-
Tariff Minus Rates Upload
- Instalment Tracking
- Risk score calculation
- Contract & Claim Process
- Underwriting
- Member Data Upload
- Accrual Process
- Claims Data Processing
- Claims Adjudication
- Claims first notice of Loss
- Due Premium chaser
- Bulk Payments
- FMLA Leave management
- Deceased Notification
-
Premium calculation
- Claims support
- Bulk Recoveries
- Credit card payment
reconciliation
- Automate identity documents
processing
- Customer Onboarding
- Life Insurance claims validation
- Document Verification
- Contract Review
- Disputed Claims
- Trade Deal Underwriting
- Data collection for AML checks
- Third Party verification
A 3x3x3 approach for Intentional Learning
Most of us have a desire to learn something new but turning that desire into new capabilities, requires a plan. It is essential to cultivate both the right mindset and the right skills to keep learning throughout our personal and professional lives. Too often, the goals that are set become goals unmet. According to a study by a famous Management Consulting company (McKinsey & Company), the best way to set learning goals and also succeed is using the 3x3x3 approach. According to the research we have to set 3 goals, have 3 month deadline & try to pick 3 people to learn with.
3 goals – “athletes in training shouldn’t work on too many muscles at once, neither should learners.”
When people set too many goals, they often fail to make real progress on any one of them. In fact, they often find it hard to remember what they’re trying to achieve. Having fewer concrete goals allows you to develop new habits and bring the right level of intentionality to improving your performance.
Mr. Mohammed Fazahir
SAP BI Consultant, KASP
3 Months – “Setting a deadline of three months also forces us to break down longer-term goals into achievable chunks.”
Three months provides enough “runway” to make tangible progress against a goal through cycles of practice, feedback, and (where needed) formal training and also a three-month period aligns with many of the natural rhythms of the organizational world, whether they be quarterly reporting, quarterly business reviews, or quarterly leadership updates.
3 people – “Socializing a goal also creates opportunities to celebrate and reinforce growth with others.”
There is a natural instinct to keep our goals to ourselves. It protects us from embarrassment if we dont achieve those goals and enables us to feel less vulnerable. It can feel uncomfortable to reach out for help but involving others in our learning is one of the most powerful ways to improve goal attainment. It creates healthy social pressure. It allows others to know where their feedback or ideas would be most useful.
That’s why people often find it easier to lose weight or exercise more regularly when they’re part of a support network as opposed to trying to change habits on their own. They share the challenge and the responsibility to stay on task. When teams make it the norm for each person to share individual development goals, the result is often a rich ecosystem for learning and growth where all members help one another.
The most important aspect of 3x3x3 is not the precise number of goals, months, or people, but the idea of having a simple, consistent process for setting and achieving goals that we can replicate throughout our career.