Will you be content if you hire and pay four people but only three show up to actually do the work? And yet, many employers do just that. According to McKinsey, an average worker spends 1.8 hours daily gathering and aggregating data, a task that is redundant and doesn’t have a direct impact on business success, and, above all, can be easily automated. Is your insurance company looking for ways to relieve your employees from this routine burden while cutting costs and minimizing errors? If so, you can consult a to build or customize an RPA solution specific to your needs. robotic process automation company But before that, where can you use RPA in insurance? And how to prepare for its implementation — either in specific processes or company wide? What is RPA, and how can it serve the insurance sector? In the insurance industry, robotic process automation (RPA) refers to rule-based software bots that can perform repetitive manual tasks, such as extracting claims data, aggregating client information from various internal and external sources, and performing background checks. If we look at the statistics of RPA implementation, the insurance sector, along with retail, are the main beneficiaries of this technology. With this popularity, Juniper Research predicts that almost a half of the insurance sector . And McKinsey believes that those who have already adopted the technology will be able to by 2025. will invest in RPA by 2024 automate 25% of their manual processes Deploying RPA in the insurance sector brings about the following benefits: . RPA can serve as a bridge between modern software, such as an ERP solution, and the existing legacy programs and devices that are still important for business. Sometimes deploying RPA in insurance can replace legacy systems altogether. For instance, a North American insurer Security Benefit in one year by automating legacy processes. Facilitates integration with legacy systems saved 40,000 labor hours . There are many real-life examples of when adopting RPA in insurance took the excessive load off employees’ backs and gave them more time for higher-value tasks. For instance, Encova Insurance saved its workers by automating their customer retention process, while Australian Unity of manual labor over the course of eight months thanks to RPA. Reduces manual work 25 hours a week spared its employees 22,493 hours . When employees are not overwhelmed with tedious routine tasks, their job satisfaction increases. A large insurance group based in Hong Kong used to delegate routine clerical work to junior staff, who made mistakes resulting in high employee turnover. The company after automating 80% of these processes. Lowers attrition rates reported lower attrition rates . Deploying RPA in insurance does require initial investment, but it helps companies to save money in the long run. For instance, a global insurance provider after deploying just 13 RPA robots. Cuts costs saved £140,000 in six months Top 7 robotic process automation insurance use cases Underwriting Underwriters must analyze information from numerous sources to assess risks and find the best rates and policy options for their clients. In the life insurance niche, for instance, this task can take up to four weeks. Underwriters of their time on data gathering and entry. spend on average 40% Bots can aggregate and process data from internal and external sites and display it on a dashboard for faster and more convenient decision making. According to McKinsey, using RPA in insurance can . Moreover, enhanced with AI, bots can perform the following tasks: reduce data processing time by 34% Populate corresponding fields in the internal system Analyze clients’ claim history and suggest pricing Verify if the person already has an existing policy Assess loss runs Identify health risks, such as checking if the person smokes Extract the client’s credit rating from third-party resources, such as Experian When RPA takes over the trivial tasks, human underwriters can focus their efforts to streamline more complex cases. A Tier 1 US insurer from different policy systems and provide underwriters with a 360-degree of the client and their risks. Prior to this collaboration, underwriters wasted a lot of time to perform this task manually. And now they could use this time to better serve the customer. turned to Accenture to automate data extraction Business process improvement The insurance sector is full of paper-intensive processes, which makes it challenging to assess operational efficiency and identify areas for improvement. When automation bots take over, it becomes possible to track their workflow and record each step. Afterwards, during audits, companies can review the logs and measure parameters, such as processing speed and the number of manual interventions required, to identify candidates for process optimization. Even by simply automating a process, the efficiency increases in terms of speed and error rate. To achieve this, many organizations are incorporating insurance RPA into their workflow. Cattolica Assicurazioni, an Italian insurance firm, turned to UiPath to automate their processes. They investigated the process of financial reconciliation and found that it contained very few exceptions and could be almost fully digitized. They deployed RPA bots to perform tedious tasks, such as matching 20.000 lines of numbers. The financial department allocated six months to complete this project. With RPA automating 90% of the process, the company with a zero error rate. accomplished this task in merely two months Claims management and fraud detection McKinsey reports that automation . reduce the amount of manual work by 80% As you can see from the stats, this is a major robotic process automation insurance use case. When claim registration is done manually, it results in errors, slow service, and unpleasant customer experience. Incorporating RPA in insurance can streamline the whole process from First Notice of Loss (FNOL) to settlement: Integrate claims data from multiple sources, such as medical records for RPA in health insurance, photos of damaged vehicles, etc. Process scanned paper claims by classifying them and entering into the system correctly Assist in claims verification and sport fraudulent claims Identify any missing information and bring this issue to the responsible officer’s attention The Canadian claims management provider SCM Insurance Services fully automated data entry for FNOL, which allowed claims . And a large US property and casualty insurer, EXL, worker compensation claim handling time by 60% within the first four months of deploying RPA in insurance claims processing. to be completed 80% faster could decrease Policy administration and cancellation Even though current software packages for policy administration save employees a lot of labor, they still include complex navigations through multiple applications, causing inefficiency and opening room for error. Insurance robotic process automation solutions, backed by and natural language processing, can receive emails from policy holders, extract data, make the required changes, such as bank mandate and address alteration, and send confirmations. The technology can handle policy rating, issuing, endorsing, renewing, and cancellation, among other tasks. machine learning Zurich Insurance Group built by Capgemini based on BluePrism software. It involves RPA robots early in policy handling as they enter policy details into the system, issue invoices, and draft policy documents that officers can review. Both Zurich clients and the insurer benefit greatly from this approach. Raffaele Nutricati, Head of Robotic Process Automation at Zurich Commercial Insurance, said, deployed an automation solution “Not only are they receiving policies of higher quality than those processed in the traditional manner, there is a significant decrease in the number of emails and phone calls to clarify information with our support desk.” Regulatory compliance The insurance sector relies on several compliance standards, such as tax law and HIPAA privacy rules, to guide documentation and processes. Officers are expected to monitor and act upon any changes in regulations. They need to align claim types with the corresponding jurisdiction as fast as possible, risking a regulatory breach. Automation bots can take over this responsibility by monitoring regulations, validating customer data accordingly, keeping a log of changes, and generating regulatory reports. For example, one popular compliance use case is Name Screening Alert Review for Sanctions on politically exposed persons (PEP). Screening systems can generate thousands of alerts every day, and it would be exhausting to verify any false positives manually. RPA in insurance can pre-process these alerts, significantly limiting the number of false positives remaining for manual verification. Customer service As we established above, deploying RPA in insurance speeds up client-facing services and almost eliminates error rates, resulting in a better customer experience. With the abundance of insurance companies, clients always have an option to leave one provider for another. According to Deloitte’s survey, after experiencing poor customer service. 41% of respondents have left their insurer Moreover, automation enables companies to perform advanced analytics to gain a better understanding of customer expectations and provide personalized offerings. For example, a client has posted on social media about his upcoming trip. An RPA assistant takes notice of this information, and when the client contacts an insurance agent about, let’s say, home insurance, the smart assistant will notify the agent about the vacation, enabling the agent to produce a customized offer covering all of the client’s needs. Such an approach will give you a competitive advantage as about the lack of personalization in insurance products. 88% of clients complain Query processing The insurance sector receives large volumes of broker and customer queries that demand fast resolution. Manual query processing can be error prone and exhausting for employees, while deploying RPA insurance bots will guarantee faster and more accurate results. Hollard Group managed to facilitate broker communication through . As a result, they reduced execution time by 600%, saving 2,000 hours of employee time per month. automating 98% of email handling processes The path to successful adoption of robotic process automation in insurance Here are the five steps that you can take to prepare yourself and your company for the upcoming automation project: . Opt for processes that are well-structured, rule-based, and don’t have many exceptions. It is also a good practice to choose frequently used processes as they will amplify the benefits and speed up return on investment. According to Gartner, the should not include more than 20 steps or involve over three applications. Identify candidate processes for automation ideal RPA candidate . Analyze the process first and eliminate any unessential steps. Also, even though every employee performs the task differently, come up with a standardized process version for automation. Optimize processes before automation . This will help people appreciate RPA benefits, give improvement suggestions, and will make them generally motivated to use the new system. Involve your employees from the beginning . There are four well-established RPA vendors, namely , , , and . Select your RPA platform UiPath Blue Prism Automation Anywhere WorkFusion . Most likely, you will still need to customize your preferred RPA solution to cover all your needs and fit into your workflows. An experienced robotic process automation company will ensure a seamless integration. Find a vendor who will help you incorporate the selected RPA insurance tools into your existing system You can learn more about in our recent article. RPA adoption challenges and how to overcome them What’s next for RPA in insurance? Deploying robotic process automation in the insurance industry can speed up operations, bring down expenses, and increase customer satisfaction. But this is just the beginning of the road towards intelligent process automation (IPA), which will empower RPA bots to take over tasks typically reserved for humans. With the help of cognitive technologies, such as , , and , RPA can maximize its contribution across the insurance value chain. AI emotion recognition optical character recognition You can learn more about intelligent automation from our recent article that . We also composed a comprehensive guide on and . Finally, you can discover more on by visiting our blog. compares IPA to RPA how to start with enterprise automation how much it will cost to implement an RPA solution RPA in finance Want to increase efficiency and cut costs by automating some of your manual insurance processes? ! Our RPA experts will help you select the right automation platform and will customize the solution to cover your unique needs. Drop us a line

CAPGEMINI

Routine

Innovative development company that shares great technology insights and trends with readers

2021 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - TECHNOLOGY-TRENDS

Bring us your challenge!

Read My Stories

Portfolio

Now Hiring

2021 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - TECH

2021 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - CONTINUOUS-INTEGRATION

2021 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - HEALTHCARE

Too Long; Didn't Read

In your car, at home, or at work — Bosch technology shapes many areas of life.

RPA in Insurance: Your Complete Guide

RPA in Insurance: Your Complete Guide

Too Long; Didn't Read

Companies Mentioned

ITRex

About Author

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN...

RPA in Insurance: Your Complete Guide

Too Long; Didn't Read

Companies Mentioned

ITRex

About Author

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN...

RELATED STORIES