More than eight out of ten companies consider CX the key to market dominance. Automation and analytics helps insurers improve CX on normal days, and even more so during a crisis.
Seamless and Accelerated Claims
Claim filing and management is stressful for both the customer and the insurer. It often entails grappling with vague information, uncertainties, and assumptions. Checking medical certificates and reports, validating photos, crosschecking police reports, and more is resource intensive, error-prone, and time consuming even in normal circumstances with the most straightforward of cases.
An automated claims processing workflow, combined with a strong analytic engine and machine learning makes the claims process faster, effortless, and seamless. It reduces costs and improves UX.
Cognitive RPA bots:
- Allow customers to send photos, videos and other information as evidence. The automation engine processes unstructured data in real-time and even enables instant claim processing. It eliminates the back-and-forth game that usually takes place between agents and policyholders.
- Validate client information and approve claims for payment. For instance, RPA bots may extract data from automobile sensors to detect the root cause of their crash, identify the specific area of damage, and determine if the driver was drunk.
- Seek corroborating evidence and flag claims with incomplete or false data. The bot observes the agent handling the exception and “learns” how to handle the exception next time.
- Initiate claims proactively, even without customer initiative. AI-enabled analytics offers actionable insights on the customer. For instance, a smart car’s sensors alert the insurer’s automated system when it detects a collision. The bot sets up a claim for the customer, backed with reliable data. Insurers may even contact the policyholder proactively with claims disbursement even before the customer has thought about it!
- Take over mundane, repetitive rule-based transactional and administrative tasks that traditionally bog down insurance employee and delay the process. For instance, automated bots integrate the claims processing information from multiple, and often disparate sources, to offer real-time processing.
The workforce, spared of these activities, may channel the extra time for value-added tasks such as engaging with clients, delivering personalized service, or taking complex decisions outside the capability of bots. Automated bots are even more helpful during telework when human agents may not have ready access to information residing in company servers.
Efficient Underwriting and Onboarding
Underwriting requires identifying the risk associated with a policy. This, in turn, requires gathering and analysing information from many sources. The insurer has to factor in health risks, the net worth of the applicant to set financial limits, the credit rating or creditworthiness of the applicant, whether the applicant already has other policies, etc. Collecting such information is difficult in the best of times and more so during a crisis when telecommuting is the norm and agents have limited access to information.
RPA bots:
- Gathers information from various sources and assess the risks associated with the specific client. Done manually, the data scrambling, analysis, and risk determination take weeks. Bots do the task in minutes. A global insurer implementing RPA shortened a reporting process from three hours to three seconds.
- Undertake validations and checks such as anti-money laundering checks. These processes usually take weeks, when done manually.
- Automate reports and recommendations to optimize underwriting and pricing of products based on accurate and relevant data.
- Auto-populate internal systems with relevant and accurate information for issuing new policies and updating client information.
Crisis such as COVID-19 requires insurers to onboard clients who cannot reach the insurers’ office or an agent. Automated systems allow insurers to manage to onboard remotely and build robust relationships. Intelligent RPA infuses speed and simplicity to the onboarding process, enhancing CX. In-call tools guide the customer through the required paperwork and capture electronic signatures. Built-in automated workflows complete the process in real-time, eliminating after call work.
Effective Policy Management
Automated policy issuance, premium payments, quote generation, and policy renewals are already the norm in insurance. The combo of RPA bots and analytics increases CX further.
RPA bots:
- Process routine customer support tasks such as address change or change of bank mandate. Artificial Intelligence-powered RPA extract information even from voice transcripts and emails to make the required changes in internal systems.
- Auto-generate of key reports and documents such as loss run reports, statement of value reports, evidence of insurability to customers, and more.
- Automate transactional tasks such as tallying cancellation date, checking inception date, validating policy terms, and more.
Bots complete processes about 40% faster and cut workforce requirement by half. Accenture estimates that successful RPA implementations will free up 20% to 30% of capacity.
Improved Backend Process
RPA bots automate several backend functions, easing the load on the insurance workforce.
- Sales and Distribution: RPA push notifications to agents, conduct compliance, legal and credit checks on clients, and empower field agents to commit to the customer immediately.
- Marketing: RPA bots keep track of proposals, renewals and client contact details, to generate follow-up alerts
- Finance: RPA systems perform repetitive tasks like pressing buttons or keys, auto-filling templates, copying and pasting information, while automating daily bank reconciliations, minimizing transactional expenses and reducing policy-cost footprint.
- Analytics improve measurement. Paper-intensive processes make it difficult to track and measure operational efficiency or identify areas of improvement. The analytic tools gather full insight into the process, to get accurate profit-loss reports, and provide actionable insights to improve processes.
- Integration with Legacy Applications: A well-crafted RPA implementation extracts and processes data from all systems, taking integration issues out of the equation.
- Regulatory Compliance: The audit trail provided by RPA boosts regulatory compliance. Automation provides full transparency into processes that otherwise went unmonitored. Analytics allow filing accurate compliance reports without human effort. 100% compliance ensures robust operation and improves the trust between the insurer and the insured.
RPA bots imitate human clicks and keystrokes, making it easy to implement it in existing software and hardware. It creates links and interoperability between legacy and new systems without coding.
Automating critical tasks keeps operations running seamlessly in all situations. It makes the insurer immune to crises surrounding their physical office locations.
Capgemini estimates insurers who apply RPA increase their productivity by 50%, reduce turnover by 80% and boost regulatory compliance to 100%. This translates to better CX. To know more details, write to us at services@suyati.com
