Does automation is the only way to revitalize the insurance sector? Is there an increasing need for adopting robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of advanced automation?
As we all know, automation is at the heart of every industry, and the insurance sector is no exception. The insurance industry relies on paper-based processes, and automation has become essential to save time and ensure customer satisfaction.
Indeed, automation in the insurance sector helps understand market and customer behaviour changes quickly. Insurance companies can automate the process, from claims assessment to claims settlement.
Automating the entire function brings several benefits such as easy underwriting, faster settlement and enhanced customer experience. Therefore, automation is the only solution for the insurance industry to handle the lethargy associated with manual work.
In this article, we will discuss a few significant ways automation revolutionalizes the insurance sector.
Before we go through the significance of intelligent automation, let’s briefly discuss what exactly covers automation in the insurance sector.
What is insurance automation?
Automation in the insurance sector meets the unique needs of the industry with the help of AI, RPA, machine learning (ML) and other advanced technologies. Other than automating manual work, intelligent automation in insurance sectors improves the efficiency of operations and helps attract more customers.
It resolves the common challenges and risks involved in the everyday process. For example, a time-consuming paper-based process affects the customer experience and impacts the bottom line of the insurance business.
Similarly, test automation services in the insurance sector also allow insurers to integrate new technologies faster. It provides flexibility, checks compliance with security protocols and ensures efficiency in the overall process over a long period.
6 Significant Ways Automation Helps Insurance Industry
Adopting automation opens up several possibilities for the insurance industry. As we know, automation reduces the dependence on laborious manual work, and insurance companies will benefit immensely. Let’s break down how automation is helping companies in the insurance sector.
1. Onboarding New Customers
With the help of intelligent automation, insurance companies can make use of conversational AI; and virtual assistants to give directions to new customers during their onboarding. This conversational AI automates data intake and creates accurate records by integrating with the existing systems.
In the manual onboarding process, insurers have to collect the details of customers along with other associated documents. It demands significant time and labour, particularly for verifying data. Under such instances, insurance companies face stiff challenges to streamline and optimize the verification process while manually following up the customer onboarding.
2. Processing Claims
The processing of claims requires insurers/insurance agents to gather documents and verify data manually. Apart from being a time-consuming process, such manual work can also lead to the risk of errors. It can further cause delays.
To avoid these time-consuming, error-prone processes, insurance companies rely on process automation to undertake the entire workflow, from the assessment of insurance claims to the settlement. Further, insurers can use automated settlements for low-value claims without relying on manual work, allowing insurance agents to focus on other core activities.
3. Eases Underwriting
Underwriting in the insurance sector deals with the collection of personal information of customers. It also includes deciding the type of coverage and the rates associated with each coverage. During underwriting, insurance companies must identify the risks the clients transfer to the company, and they also have to arrive at the policy premium.
When the number of customers increases, managing the processing of applications manually, becomes difficult. It can create a serious dent in the bottom line and it impacts customer satisfaction. When there is a severe delay, customers leave dissatisfied.
4. Customer Service
Insurance companies can rely on virtual agents to enhance customer service. Further, automation is not just limited to customer service but helps generate customer profiles from large and complex unstructured data gathered.
Virtual agents can easily access these profiles of policyholders. Also, customer representatives can make use of these profiles to get a comprehensive view of customers as and when needed. On the other hand, customers get a personalized experience when automation comes into existence. It allows insurers to offer fast and precise quotes, optimize processes and offer policies based on customer needs.
5. Regulatory Compliance
Every industry has to ensure regulatory compliance, and the compliance procedures in the insurance sector are ever-evolving and coupled with severe complexities. In compliance matters, relying on manual efforts can pose risks, especially when there are many records.
Any breach in regulations can result in grave consequences, impacts the operations and even result in financial losses. At this point, insurers can use RPA for accessing files and monitoring compliance. It also enables customer data validation, data security, account closures, and report generation related to regulatory compliance.
6. Policy Management
Intelligent automation is at the core of policy management. It helps insurers to automate policy management to update the issuance of policies. Further, it ensures that the underwriting decisions can be made at the time of issue of policies.
Also, insurance companies have to inform the customer regarding these updates. Manually following up with the process is tedious when there are hundreds and thousands of policyholders. Automation optimizes the issue of policies and helps speed up the entire process. It also allows policyholders to send update requests regarding their personal information.
Final Thoughts
Insurance companies automate their operations to speed up their workflow and reduce the risks associated with manual work. Further, process automation allows insurers to optimize core functions starting from customer onboarding, underwriting, and assessment to settlement of claims.
You can even use the help of a chatbot development company to design a custom-design intelligent chatbot to communicate with your customers. Start with automating customer onboarding services and slowly automate your processes to get the best rewards in the form of improved productivity, exceptional customer service and enhanced bottom line!