Like many other sectors, insurance is an industry plagued by historical manual processes that govern almost every part of its administrative operation. That’s why technologies like automation are crucial for the insurance industry to thrive in the modern world and overcome the challenges every sector now faces.
Regularly eating up valuable employee time and becoming a priority over higher-value work, like engaging with customers, are manual operations related to claims processing, underwriting, new customer applications, and customer support. Let’s show you what can be done with some automation.
What Is Insurance Automation?
Automation in insurance is any technology that removes the need for a human to carry out a task. There are many different forms of automation, and they can be combined with other technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), to deliver enormous benefits to any business with manual, data-based processes.
Challenges and Opportunities In the Insurance Industry
The biggest challenge that the insurance industry faces is just the same as every other industry right now – rising costs. With inflating prices, insurance companies are struggling to cope with the ever-mounting pressure of growing costs in every aspect of their businesses.
Because managing costs is more critical than ever for the success of insurance companies, the biggest opportunity they have is to use technology to drive efficiency and cut costs. Automation cuts down on manual work by removing the need for people to carry out basic tasks. It also removes the standard error level created when people carry out administrative tasks and saves time fixing errors.
With the huge amount of data processing that insurers carry out, automation should be the go-to for each one of them if they want to get on top of their costs.
Use Cases of Insurance Automation
There are a variety of excellent uses of automation within insurance that companies can capitalize on very quickly, and then refine the technology they have in place to generate further ROI over time.
Claims processing
Fast and effective claims processing is an insurance company’s top priority. On average, claim processing takes up to five days, and insurers have to check doctor reports meticulously, third-party witness statements, previous accident data – the list goes on. With a bot in place, this data can be ‘read’ using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and then transferred directly into their claims database, drastically cutting down on the time it takes for a human to review a case.
Governance
Insurance companies are a heavily regulated group, and for a good reason. Their products and services are financial services in one way or another, and so consumer protection is of paramount importance and at the front of every insurer’s mind. To stay compliant, insurers have to keep all of their terms of service and contractual agreements up to date with the most recent legislation. This is a process with a lot of room for error, as well as being very time intensive. Introducing a bot fixes both of those problems and keeps insurers safe from regulatory fines and a loss of customer confidence.
Underwriting
Automation in insurance isn’t limited to just basic data processing. It can also include complex data analysis to help underwriters establish insurance values that protect them against the inherent risk of insurance claims. Automation, using AI in particular, can bring together many data sets to help more accurately analyze risk and set insurance premiums accordingly.
Hopefully, this quick rundown of some of the potential for automation in insurance firms has shown you a glimpse of how powerful the technology can be. If your goal is to become more efficient and cut costs – there’s no better place to start than automation.
Need to get a handle on costs in your insurance business? Speak to PAteam today.
