How intelligent automation is reshaping the insurance industry

By Concetta Yates and Larry Wachs

The rise of advanced technologies, namely intelligent automation, enables insurance firms to improve the customer experience, streamline processes and cut costs. IA tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can revolutionize the insurance industry – refining the way insurers function and handle customer interactions.

Concetta Yates

The insurance industry 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. Intelligent automation helps 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.

Ushering in a new era of heightened productivity

The adoption 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 insurance firms strive to not only reduce costs but to also maintain, and take steps to improve, customer satisfaction.

The insurance industry, however, has been historically slow to jump on the technology bandwagon, even as businesses across industries have sped up their digital transformations. The average underwriter, for example, continues to spend more than 50% of their workday on repetitive tasks.

Intelligent automation is a combination of components, including AI, robotic process automation, business process management and other complementary technologies that enable companies to advance workflows and streamline end-to-end processes. In a digital-first world, intelligent automation adoption can boost customer satisfaction by giving insurance workers the time they need to focus on complex customer cases.

Robotic process automation 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 RPA.

Intelligent document processing allows insurance firms to process vast amounts of data with minimal human intervention at a more than 98% rate of accuracy. This replaces time-consuming and error-prone data entry, which is not only slow but creates an inefficient and costly domino effect when information is input incorrectly. AI components can 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, as well as what needs to be done 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 and other advanced IA technologies work together to streamline business processes, reduce operational costs, and improve the accuracy and speed of services.

Intelligent automation offers key benefits

IA can automate many of the tasks involved in processing insurance claims - speeding up claims processing and improving accuracy. For example, IA gives firms the power to 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.

The introduction of chatbots powered by natural language processing can answer customer queries and resolve simple issues. This frees 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 let customers know of policy renewals, claim status updates, and other important information. This can help improve customer satisfaction by keeping them informed in real time.

AI can analyze large amounts of data, identifying patterns and making predictions about customer behavior and future events. This can help insurers to price policies more accurately and avoid underwriting risks that may otherwise be too high.

Analyzing large amounts of data can also enhance fraud detection by identifying patterns and anomalies. AI can help insurers detect and prevent fraud before it occurs, reducing the amount of money lost to fraud.

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.

Helping insurers build thriving workforces

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.

Take a strategic approach to intelligent automation

Don’t make the mistake of assuming the benefits of IA are confined to the big-league, multinational insurance players. Intelligent automation is for everyone in the industry – from agencies and specialty insurers to regional insurers and – yes – multinationals.

For small and mid-sized players, intelligent automation presents an opportunity to overcome staffing and scale challenges to effectively compete in the marketplace. Not only does IA improve efficiencies, but it can also help insurers innovate and develop new products and services more quickly and effectively. Companies can stay ahead of the competition and meet the evolving needs of their customers. But to be successful, businesses need to make digital transformation a strategic priority.

Concetta Yates is vice president of customer strategy and industry solutions at SS&C Blue Prism. She may be contacted at [email protected].

Larry Wachs is sales executive with SS&C Blue Prism. He may be contacted at [email protected].