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Insurance used to be seen as a long, drawn-out, paper-heavy process. But Digital Process Automation (DPA) is changing all that…
Thanks to digital transformation across other industries, customers now expect instantaneous responses from their insurers, whether they’re applying for a new policy or making a claim. But the insurance market is full of stringent regulations, so it’s not as easy to digitize. Not to mention the myriad of legacy systems that insurers have built up over the years as they try to modernize and keep up with the impending threat of insurtech start-ups.
DPA orchestrates the people, applications, and information across your insurance organization. By integrating systems and eliminating silos, your employees are provided with the single view of data they need to make decisions and perform services efficiently throughout the customer journey, from onboarding through to underwriting and claims.
Here are five processes that insurers can transform with DPA to delight customers and still adhere to compliance and best practice.
Small ticket insurance purchases can now be completed in a matter of clicks thanks to innovative new platforms such as Lemonade. This has inevitably led customers to expect the same smooth sign-up process from the commercial insurance market, or indeed when applying for any policy. While the verification process is more stringent, the onboarding process doesn’t have to be slowed down with paperwork thanks to new technology and applications.
Process automation can help to deliver bespoke quotes and terms and conditions that are available across a variety of devices – just as it has for many companies already. This is a requirement for today’s digitally-savvy customer, who will expect an omnichannel experience from their insurer.
As highlighted by Deloitte, “Onboarding and ongoing learning provides the best method for carriers to generate brand loyalty and affinity.” By connecting your systems, data and people, your brokers have more customer insight. This speeds-up applications and allows brokers to build a more holistic view of their clients and provide tailored services and communications, paving the way for long-lasting relationships.
Arguably the most important insurance process, underwriting heavily relies on customer information and historical data, which as insurance firms have grown and developed, may be stored in disparate systems. This data needs to be checked by users when establishing whether they should issue a customer with a policy.
Taking a DPA approach to underwriting orchestrates all your information so that users don’t have to manually log into and search through different systems, improving efficiency and speeding up the issuing of policies. Underwriters can also automate tasks within the process, such as passing information between departments and analyzing third-party documents.
Bizagi helped Generali to restructure their system’s architecture and replace paper-based systems with automated and efficient workflows. 38 automated processes were fully operational within just two months and time spent underwriting their most complex offers was reduced by 50%. The organization saw a 60% cost saving thanks to increased productivity and reduced processing time.
An essential component of the underwriting process, peer review has historically had a casual approach with partners discussing policies around a boardroom table. This traditional approach will no longer cut it, as it doesn’t leave an audit trail, which makes it hard to prove compliance. Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing insurance claims. Insurers need to be able to demonstrate best practice to the authorities.
By defining your peer review with proper process mapping and automating steps within the process, you can ensure that you are always following best practice to a T. All decisions that are made as part of the underwriting and review process are accurately documented and saved in your system. This means that when it’s time to audit your policies, you can do so at the click of a button.
Bizagi worked with a leading UK underwriter to create a solution for their 20-year old legacy system. The system had led to a backlog of around 500 pending items due to the very manual internal process of completing reviews.
Thanks to proper workflows and automation being put in place, business users spent 25% less time on the peer review process as they no longer had to cross-check documents across numerous separate databases and systems, nor did they have to chase each other with emails. The system automatically emails users every morning with a prompt, listing their outstanding tasks. This enables management to escalate cases based on SLAs and presents them with a complete audit trail of all actions taken in the review process. So, when Lloyd’s quarterly audit comes around, the company has a central audit trail, ready and waiting.
When a claim is made on a policy, it’s the real moment of truth for customer experience. “The successful claims operation will be able to identify valuable data from all available resources, and use this to provide a more effective customer experience,” reports EY in its ‘The future of claims’ report.
But the problem is, when this data is stored in disconnected systems, it can be difficult to gather all the information needed to process a claim in a timely manner. By connecting your systems, you can streamline workflows, process claims more efficiently and deploy automation capabilities to improve your team’s productivity and delight your customers.
Universal Group, the leading insurer in the Dominican Republic, used Bizagi to digitally transform its vehicle insurance claims process, which had become increasingly complex due to disparate systems. Thanks to digital process automation, they have been able to define, deliver and adapt processes quickly, resulting in greater satisfaction for both employees and customers. Bizagi has helped to double the number of claims processed, but Universal has only had to hire one additional employee, which has, in turn, contributed to a 45% increase in revenue.
96% of carriers have decided that claims transformation and digitization is imperative – and will help to deliver results as seen by Universal. Not only will it improve customer experience, but it will also help to identify fraudulent claims. A transparent, but secure view of data across systems combined with indicators pulled in from external sources, such as IoT devices, can help insurers detect, investigate and prevent fraud.
The Policy Administration System is the heart of every insurer’s technology stack, acting as a system of record for core processes. But nearly two out of three insurers are looking to modernize their PAS. It sounds like a mammoth task, but you don’t need to rip and replace your entire system to improve policy administration. Not only is that a costly solution, but when technology moves at such a fast pace, it isn’t effective in the long-term.
Instead, using a wrap-around solution like Bizagi allows you to introduce new technologies to your PAS, such as DPA, machine learning, and predictive analytics, which can introduce efficiencies and help to mitigate risk in real-time.
For example, DPA can help ensure that you are always meeting regulatory compliance despite all the moving parts within the policy administration process, which can be difficult and time-consuming to track. Automating the process means that all data and risk information is recorded, versioned and ensures every step completed in line with internal and external guidelines and regulations.
Orchestrating and automating your insurance processes also future-proofs your firm. Technology will only continue to evolve at a fast pace and established firms need to protect themselves against the threat of insurtech start-ups. Automation gives you the opportunity to remain competitive. As Accenture states, “Intelligent automation will enable insurers to analyze huge volumes of complex, real-time data and make myriads of swift, far-reaching decisions across their organizations. They’ll be able to use this capability to develop new products, enter additional markets and forge strategic partnerships.”
If you’d like to learn more about how insurers can digitally transform with the help of DPA, download our ebook, Transforming Insurance, and find out how Bizagi can help you modernize your digital operations to ensure compliance and provide a better customer experience.
