Introduction
Have you ever had an opportunity to talk about the insurance industry? If you keep an ear out, you’ll often hear many people speak poorly about the insurance industry. If you have little experience with insurance firms, you’re probably right to be skeptical of these rumors and hearsay, and may have wondered just how true this opinion is. However, I’m here to inform you that having such a point of view regarding work or service in the insurance business has become extremely common in the past few years.
In fact, the insurance industry suffers from a high turnover rate, with a 10% increase in overall employee turnover in recent years, and you’ll find many workers and customers alike that have bad things to say about the industry. You’ll find very few people that speak highly about insurance companies, and there’s many reasons for that, which we’ll dig into later. As Bernie Sanders once aptly said,
“People don’t trust private insurance companies for all the right reasons.”
The Issues in the Insurance Industry
Those of you with experience in the insurance industry surely know that the work that goes on there is notorious for being extremely repetitive, time-consuming and straight-up unengaging, to say the very least.
Managing many insurance operations daily, such as claims-processing and legal documentation can be an egregiously monotonous task, however critical it may be. Insurers tend to have many manual processes and paperwork that result in them being overwhelmed, even with larger workforces.
Many people believe this is a common situation in many industries, but disregard the important fact that the insurance industry has a duty to its customers more-so than other industries as customer interaction is nothing less than a core aspect of their service. There is no bigger mistake than forsaking customer interaction in this type of business, it is an unfixable hole that will sink your business and take you with it.
Where does RPA factor in?
I’m certain most people within the insurance business can duly inform me that there is no shortage to the amount of problems the insurance industry faces, but there is hope to be had regarding the bleak situation insurance companies are in.
What if I told you that you could solve virtually all of these problems with RPA? Now, hear me out here, it can be said that the very nature of the problems the insurance industry faces can be easily dealt with through modern automation.
If you need proof, all you need to do is look at the large spike of interest and investment by the insurance industry within the past few years. While the process is still ongoing and slow, it is no less a step in the right direction. Insurers themselves have admitted to facing difficulty meeting the needs of the customers of today and are turning towards automation as a way to improve efficiency and increase customer interaction.
What does RPA bring to the table?
Simply put, RPA brings everything you could want to the table. RPA is capable of streamlining and entirely automating all tasks. Improving worker morale and leaving the repetitive work to RPA leads to improved customer-employee interaction, an essential aspect of any insurance company as we established earlier.
RPA is capable of rapid automation and integration, and is user friendly. No prior coding knowledge or experience is necessary or required to be able to utilize it, which I’d like to point out is what makes RPA so incredibly versatile. More importantly however, is that alongside minimizing errors, RPA can join the disparate systems that insurance companies consist of, marginally reducing operational costs.
Ease of Integration
Many CEOs and higher-ups still rely on older or legacy systems to manage their company, and it is nothing short of a great challenge to integrate modern technologies into an older work environment. It requires a large investment of time, revenue and manpower to be able to replace existing systems with newer ones. With RPA, bridging the gap between legacy and modern systems has never been easier for insurers. RPA is entirely non-invasive and an ideal way to ease integration between older and newer systems.
Where can RPA be utilized?
RPA offers a wide range of advantages to insurers, and has a vast number of use cases for insurance companies,
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Data Processing
- Insurance firms handle a large quantity of raw data on a daily basis, and using workers solely for data processing will only cost more time and money. However, RPA is a proven technology that is capable of addressing this issue through automation, or even assisting the workers themselves by doing the grunt work and allowing them to supervise the processes and end result.
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Regulation & Auditing
- Insurance firms not only have to comply with current laws and regulations, but also account for any new policies and legal constraints and requirements that may come up in the future. Dealing with legal matters can be a fickle and turbulent process, anyone who has dealt with one knows this truth better than those who haven’t yet experienced this.
Let us not forget however, that RPA is capable of producing detailed logs of all of its work, and acts as a safety net for insurers by allowing them to easily follow the paper trail led behind by RPA should any legal issue arise. No longer will you need to worry about any legal fallout!
- Insurance firms not only have to comply with current laws and regulations, but also account for any new policies and legal constraints and requirements that may come up in the future. Dealing with legal matters can be a fickle and turbulent process, anyone who has dealt with one knows this truth better than those who haven’t yet experienced this.
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Policy Administration
- Insurance firms generally use a policy administration structure that is complex, costly and requires a great deal of maintenance to manage. Such systems tend to be rigid and require extensive effort to manage, thus making achieving scalability a difficult endeavour, however with RPA there can be a large number of active bots managing and standardizing all aspects of these systems, making scalability way more feasible.
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Data Handling & Management
- The sheer volume of information that insurance industries have to deal with can be overwhelming, with large numbers of physical information that has to be managed by employees.
RPA can help in improving the services an insurance firm provides by assisting with information retrieval and management and digitizing data.
- The sheer volume of information that insurance industries have to deal with can be overwhelming, with large numbers of physical information that has to be managed by employees.
“Automation is good, so long as you know exactly where to put the machine.” -Eliyahu Goldratt
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Customer Satisfaction
- By increasing company morale and freeing up workers to add a personal touch to client matters, insurers can appear more empathetic to clients. Everyone’s aware that within the insurance industry, customer satisfaction is a crucial part of revenue, as many clients refer each other to the same company if the service they receive is commendable and makes them feel respected and valued.
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Underwriting
- An important job in any insurance firm, underwriting involves evaluating the exposures of clients through a time-consuming and grueling process lasting several weeks before an outcome is decided.
Through the usage of RPA, the process can be expedited significantly and lead to faster generation of results.
- An important job in any insurance firm, underwriting involves evaluating the exposures of clients through a time-consuming and grueling process lasting several weeks before an outcome is decided.
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Service Cancellation
- Everyone knows that insurance firms have the worst cancellation policies, and getting out of a signed agreement could very well be your longest (and worst) nightmare yet.
Several documents have to be legally rendered null and cancelling can take a long time, due to dealing with emails, calls, cancellation systems and confirmations that are necessary from a legal standpoint.
RPA can expedite such a process as well, allowing a customer to terminate the services of the company with less time consumption.
- Everyone knows that insurance firms have the worst cancellation policies, and getting out of a signed agreement could very well be your longest (and worst) nightmare yet.
The Future of the Insurance Industry
There’s no sugarcoating it, the insurance industry is not in a good state right now, and that may be quite the understatement. Luckily, there is a saving grace for them in the form of modern automation, and those realizing the opportunity present at hand and capitalizing on this opportunity will absolutely see great success within the future.
Recent trends show that the insurance industry is collectively implementing RPA at increasing rates, and utilizing it to improve company morale, streamline workflow, generate more revenue, eliminate data errors and inconsistencies and gain increased overall flexibility and adaptability. With all these benefits and no losses to be had by using automation, it is nothing but certain that RPA will become an essential part of all insurance companies within the foreseeable future. Amber Rudd once told us that,
“Automation is driving the decline of banal and repetitive tasks.”