A misplaced decimal or added zero on an insurance claim or policy can cost the client, or company, hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Put simply, insurance companies cannot afford to make mistakes. Can automation in insurance help address this challenge?
The Necessity of Automation in Insurance Industry
For every type of industry, besides for the significant revenue growth highly-automated companies experience, there are countless reasons why to automate. Let’s explore the rationale behind automation in insurance.
Setting up, maintaining, and submitting claims for insurance policies requires repeated documentation and tracking. While it may feel tedious processing these policies and claims, missing a digit or code can have disastrous effects. If employees are working within several systems, plus trying to track emails and numbers while entering ever-changing information, mistakes are prone to happen.
A variety of administrative insurance automation ideas can be implemented to enable providers to perform more effectively and avoid human error and common mistakes.
Automated Insurance Solutions
Below are some all-too-common scenarios which automations can drastically improve:
1. Insurance Document Automation
Dredging through piles of paperwork each day?
Stop wasting human energy on bot-worthy tasks.
Insurance document automations set your employee up to simply and successfully carry out tasks such as:
- create a policy
- document an incident
- input a claim, or
- change an address across all systems.
An agent can input information on one document and the automated system carries out the rest of the update, freeing up the agent’s time to carry out responsibilities that require human insight – like building client relationships.
Advantages of Document Automation in Insurance
A client looks for a quick and efficient insurance process, and will base their experience off of this aspect. Using a digital system along with relevant insurance automations means completing the process in a much shorter period of time. Cut out the piles of paperwork and extensive back and forth communications with insurance document automations. The hassle-free experience will attract loyal, returning customers.
2. Insurance Claims Automation
Checking three different binders before addressing a client’s claim?
No more running back and forth from the shelves to your desk to figure out how and where to mark your notes.
The detailed notations of the insurance claim situation is often collected and recorded using a combination of handwritten notes and clumsily crafted emails to the client for further information or other documentation. Why scrawl, sort, and scramble when you can set up automations that free up the employee’s valuable time, and raise the bar in customer service?
When you implement automated insurance claims, both you and your customer will appreciate the professional and clear requests for information and documentation. Additionally, with insurance claims automation, everyone involved in the process has the ability to easily view where each specific claim is up to.
3. Insurance Business Process Automation
Are your employees CC and BCCing half of the people involved in memo form?
Stop wondering what the next step in the process is, or whose responsibility it is.
Establishing automation within your insurance company’s operating system ensures that all who need to know about an update – know. Sometimes, sending an email becomes a monumental task when there is a long list of staff who must be made aware of a change in policy, completion of a case, or the beginning of acquiring a new client.
The many communications needed in insurance claim processing can be simplified and intuitive, including complex interactions involving the:
- insured party
- insurer
- medical providers
- auto shops
- claim administrator, etc.
Incorporating insurance business process automations within the system ensures that everyone involved is notified of updates in a timely manner, and the overall workflow is eased.
4. Risk Assessment Automation
Does each broker use their self-made, sometimes incomplete form to assess risks?
A system can input, track, and assess risk, automatically.
Collecting and inputting data from a variety of sources takes a lot of valuable employee time and can be annoying. Instead, use robotic process automation in insurance to handle the repetitive tasks, such as collecting the customer information and extracting the claims data. Automated administrative insurance systems have the ability to take incomplete information input by a broker and process it – regardless of the original format. The insurance automation will then be set up to determine the risk level in regards to the quote, and later assign the policy to the right staff member at the next level.
This means that the underwriter who is best suited for this instance, and is available or next in line, will automatically receive the risk assessment information.
Commercial insurer? Set up the automations in the insurance system to notify you of any present risks to assets or property in real time.
Benefits of Automation in Insurance Industry
Thanks to their many advantages, automations are becoming increasingly popular in every type of business – over 3 in 4 providers plan to implement automations in the healthcare industry. As described above, automations can streamline the workflow for the entire staff. For insurance companies, this enables both agents and employees to focus on the sales intake details such as client management and acquiring new clients, for which the human touch remains indispensable.
Core benefits of implementing robotic process automation in insurance include:
- Having all documentation and notes synced between all systems, locations, and users
- Communicating with clients easily and quickly throughout the entire process
- All staff and agents seeing updates and requests for further information or documentation in real-time
Here are some additional advantages of using automation for insurance companies:
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Medical and Physical Assessments
An important component of insurance processing is sorting through the medical and physical data received. Save all the time it takes to comb through an individual’s records and collect the relevant data by using automated insurance solutions that can quickly filter and format the information for you. If you take document automation for insurance to the next level, employees, agents, and underwriters can be apprised of the information when it is sorted and reformatted for consistency and clarity.
Save all the human effort you currently invest in manually collecting, editing, and reformatting client assessments.
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Processing Payments
It is very important for insurance companies to have a robust digital payment solution for automated insurance payment billing, transfer of funds, and payroll distribution. Automated payment processes will digitalize, upload, and automatically apply payment to relevant invoices and receipts.
Automatically issue error-free claim payouts, claim receipts, and payroll.
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Auto Claims
Placing and filing an auto claim involves several steps. Rather than conducting lengthy negotiations between the insurer and claimant, with insurance claims automation, the process can be a simple transfer of documentation and funds.
No more being the middle-man between auto insurers and claimants.
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Real-time Damage Assessment plus Repair Estimate
Assessing the damage and repair costs is an unavoidable and very effort-heavy factor in the insurance industry. With the help of intuitive automations, car damages can be easily assessed, claims expedited, and even settlements arranged in real time.
Significantly decrease the investment necessary for auto damage assessments and repair estimates.
Challenges of Implementing Insurance Automation
Implementing automation in the insurance industry is not always smooth sailing. This could explain why insurance companies have been slow to adopt automations. Compared to other businesses, insurers are lagging behind in utilizing the potential of AI to improve their operations.
What are the challenges to adopting automation for insurance companies and how can they be addressed to enable successful implementation?
IT Infrastructure Insufficient
Challenge: When integrating automation in insurance systems, executives need to think about their current tech capabilities. Their IT teams need to be able to lead the automation adoption. Part of the strategy needs to focus on the IT team’s ability to support the other employees and insurance agents in using the automated insurance solutions.
Solution: There are a couple of ways insurance company leaders can support their IT teams to guarantee successful automation adoption.
Firstly, they can invest in training their current IT staff and developing their skills so that they can ease the transition to an automated system for the rest of their team.
Another idea is to hire a tech leader who is experienced in robotic process automation in insurance and can guide the existing IT team.
Automated System Unable to Scale Quickly Enough
Challenge: Whatever insurance automation system is adopted, must be able to grow with the company. It’s not enough for the automations to work within the current structure; as the insurance company scales, the automated system needs to be able to handle additional users and not get overloaded.
One of the well-known benefits of automation in insurance is that it leads to growth. A more efficient workflow, more effective customer retention strategies and more employees free to focus on the tasks requiring human input results in a boom in business. The automated system that has enabled this growth, then, in turn, needs to be able to support the growth.
Solution: A certified automation specialist can guide a business in choosing automations that work for them. They can help implement automations for insurance companies that will scale as the business scales.
Workforce Rendered Obsolete
Challenge: Around 2.8 million people are currently employed across the USA in the insurance industry. They are working on tasks such as claims processing, underwriting, administrative work and acting as insurance agents.
When adopting automation in insurance, there is a real danger of job loss for many employees. According to a report released by McKinsey & Company, by 2030, approximately 39 million Americans could lose their jobs because of automation.
Solution: However, insurance automations rendering the workforce obsolete is not a given. Executives need to strategize to think of ways to retain current employees, in addition to implementing and gaining the numerous benefits of automation in insurance. Ideas include retraining the existing workforce to fill in the areas that automations don’t address.
It is worth noting that there are many tasks that will still require human input. An automated system cannot drive to the scene of a car accident to inspect the damage caused by a traffic collision.
Automated Insurance Solutions: Recommended Tools and Software
Now that you know how important implementing automation in insurance is, and are aware of the benefits and potential difficulties, the next step is to incorporate insurance automation ideas within your current operating system.
Here at Flow Digital, based on our experience working with a number of businesses in the insurance industry we recommend the following software tools:
Getting Started and Insuring it Right
It’s about cutting the stacks of paperwork, decreasing the email draft pile, and spending your employees’ time on building your business. And it’s also about the significant bottom line savings automations in insurance are generating for companies who have implemented workflow automations.
It may be daunting to work out which automations your company needs. Flow Digital’s workflow automation consultants have worked with countless companies within the industry, guiding them in choosing and implementing automation in insurance. They will strategize with you to figure out which tasks you want to automate and how to do so. This will allow you to gain the full benefits automations in insurance can generate for your business.
Reach out to us today to ensure your business takes the right steps toward successful insurance automation adoption.
