How to manage the current uptick in automation requests

Here are three ways automation can be used by insurance companies to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Insurance companies are increasingly exploring how automation can support operational processes and business continuity. (iStock)

As more and more individuals and businesses are impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, insurance companies are dealing with an influx of disability, workers compensation, business interruption, medical claims and customer requests. Projections show that insurance carriers will be increasingly tasked with managing requests and complaints as the full health, financial and other ramifications continue to fully reveal themselves.

Several areas of insurance operations have already experienced strains inflicted by the pandemic. It has become challenging for some to effectively manage this influx. While issues like understaffed call centers and operational changes brought on by social distancing have short-term impact, remote work mandates and failure of business continuity plans are expected to have long-term repercussions for operations. To respond, insurance companies are increasingly exploring how automation can support processes.

What follows are three ways automation can be used by insurance companies today to help respond to COVID-19 now and build a digital workforce for the future.

No. 1: Responding to an uptick in claims

Unfortunately, as cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, there will be a subsequent increase in death and disability claims for life, annuity and benefits carriers. Call centers across the globe have been inundated with an unmanageable volume of requests related to death and disability claims. Whether individuals are calling to inquire about coverage plans, looking to submit a claim or reaching out about another more innocuous topic, call centers are fielding and managing an unprecedented number of policy holder requests.

Ingesting claims data — data entry, mining and analysis — has traditionally been the job of insurance company employees. Now, as the volume of claims explodes and employees tasked with processing them are forced to work from home, this is no longer a feasible solution. Even during the best of times, these processes, if completed manually, can lead to employee burnout and, consequently, slow productivity rates.

By turning to automation with robotic process automation (RPA) at the core, insurance organizations can handle spikes by processing claim forms submitted through paper, email and contact center channels with speed and accuracy.

Gathering, organizing and producing insights from data is faster and more accurate. RPA also saves employees the time and stress of dealing with operational minutia, which allows them to focus their efforts on making more accurate, data-based decisions.

No. 2: Augmenting customer support

During this time, people have naturally become more interested in proactively viewing policy information so they can understand the gaps in their current insurance coverage as well as ways to cover new or changing needs. To manage, property and casualty insurers can leverage an interactive digital channel that can be quickly implemented so customers can view policy information, make changes and submit claims. The solution can also prompt the policy holder to speak with an agent in real time, if they require further assistance.

Inputted information and changes are automatically extracted from these digital channels by RPA bots before it is updated with other available data on the policy holder from existing systems and seamlessly passed on to an agent for resolution. By working in tandem with the bot, agents can more thoughtfully and proactively deliver the timely response policy holders deserve.

No. 3: Managing new transactions

As a result of the novel coronavirus, many insurance companies have experienced a huge volume increase in Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) ordering, which is necessary in order to be able to work from home. UiPath research indicates there were 2,800 RSA ordering transactions in the month of January, 4,065 transactions in February and 11,925 transactions as of March 19, 2020.

With remote staff, insurers simply don’t have the capacity to manually process all these transactions and are increasingly turning to RPA for support. One insurance organization created seven robots to support new Service Now transactions, Remote Access Services (RAS) and Enterprise Mobility Services (EMS), to properly service their customers during these trying times. ​

As the global community works to respond and eventually recover from this pandemic, insurers need to adapt and approach these unprecedented challenges in a thoughtful, creative way. By leveraging automation, insurance carriers and agencies can ensure their business manages the work they need to while introducing efficiencies to respond to increased volume.

While the operations teams of many insurance companies have already started rolling out bottom-up automation to address the above immediate needs of COVID-19, executives are increasingly exploring how automation can supplement employee efforts across the enterprise. Based on emerging executive-level operations strategies, automation is sure to become an embedded part of the new digital insurance workforce.

Sathya Sethuraman is director of the Global Insurance Practice at UiPath, a provider of automation software. He can be reached by sending email to uipath@v2comms.com.

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