Automation can support insurers now pressured to digitize
For the sake of both employee wellbeing and business continuity, digitization is an imperative for today's insurers.
A recent PwC survey of 6,000 insurance consumers in the U.S. found that 41% are likely or more likely to switch insurance providers due to a lack of digital capabilities. This isn’t surprising as tech-savvy Insurers are often the ones capable of responding to customers’ product-service needs sooner and more robustly than those operating with legacy technology debt.
Insurance enterprises that haven’t yet digitally transformed are at risk of being outperformed. For insurers that have made it this far with analog processes, where do they start?
While there are plenty of buzzy technologies on the market, insurers should consider using automation technology to accelerate their digital transformation efforts. Those getting started with automation can set up software robots to execute routine processes that would otherwise be a pain for customers and agents including sales, underwriting, servicing and claims management. By incorporating automation into these time- and financially-sensitive processes, insurers can improve agility when challenges arise, expedite speed in response time, and get customer-facing digital capabilities up and running faster.
Increased connectivity empowers insurers to excel.
The pandemic continues to mire insurers in an onslaught of employee attrition, which can create a backlog of agent and customer transaction fulfilment and inquiries thereby choking the operations. To keep up, contact center agents may find themselves rushing to process customer sales and service requests, which can jeopardize the quality of work they’re delivering. Legacy systems make it worse by further slowing down insurers as retrieving information from disparate locations can quickly become disorganized and prone to human error. Overwhelmed workers are at increased risk of making mistakes while handling a customer case, the consequences of which can range from inconvenient to compromising.
Instead of processing forms that customers submit through email or fax, insurers can rely on intelligent software robots to sort the documents and input customers’ information into CRM, core systems, F&A systems, etc. for straight through processing. Likewise, insurers can program software robots to aggregate critical information as needed and present it as a dashboard to brokers, independent agents and contact center agents to help need-based selling and servicing. With all the information they need directed to them by digital assistants, agents become more adept and productive, thereby enabling them to work more accurately and to efficiently process and service their customers’ needs. Additionally, agents will have more time to interact with consumers themselves, which can distinguish their agency as one truly committed to understanding and supporting its customers.
Beyond making existing operations more efficient, automation also helps insurers wield newer technologies such as machine learning with ease of integration to support decision-making in underwriting and claims adjustment. Automation technology excels in its ability to compliment human judgement in pricing and claim payments, which enhances workforce productivity to deliver enterprise results.
Many organizations, when trying to digitally transform, make the mistake of investing in costly tools that take too long to implement as all the system silos required to create the ecosystem don’t integrate in real-time with existing operations. Consequently, trying to communicate information between systems adds more grunt work to employee workloads. For instance, more insurers are turning to Insurtech partners to offer their business new digital capabilities, but they experience friction when trying to incorporate partners’ technologies into their existing ecosystem. Automation can close these gaps by working at the intersection of applications, whether they are for processing licenses, compensation, products, underwriting, customer service, billing or claims transactions. With automation facilitating a seamless information exchange, Insurance operations can focus on more high-value work that helps to grow the business instead of managing their system changes.
Automation unlocks better work experiences.
Failure to digitize doesn’t just risk customer churn; it also jeopardizes talent retention. Overwhelmed agents and employees are at an increased likelihood of resigning in search of better career opportunities, which in turn places a greater burden on remaining employees to maintain the status quo. Without the right tools to support their workloads, these remaining employees will quickly fall behind mounting customer demand. For the sake of both employee wellbeing and business continuity, digitization is an imperative for today’s insurers.
Employees are eager for their organizations to digitize, with many welcoming the opportunity to train on new technologies to expand their skillsets. In fact, 91% of office workers believe their employer should be more willing to invest in digital and technology skill-building. For example, actuaries are actively learning technologies such as Python and transitioning into data science jobs that help them deliver accurate pricing and risk analysis as well as to get better paid. Once trained on how to leverage technology, the upskilled employees in the Insurance operations will be better at identifying new opportunities for digitization to further spur growth for the carriers.
Many business leaders have already seen the benefits of adding automation to their tech stacks firsthand. In a recent survey of U.S. business executives, UiPath found that automation is helping organizations perform better by saving time (71%) and improving productivity (63%) —two critical advantages in delivering commendable customer service, even if temporarily short-staffed.
Insurance enterprises have long been criticized for lagging with digital transformation due to their reliance on legacy systems and outdated processes, but the pandemic paired with the “Great Resignation” pushed hose frustrations to the boiling point. With brand loyalty and internal talent on the line, insurers can’t afford to not to automate their processes. Automation is the key for change. Not only can automation jumpstart powerful digital transformation initiatives for insurers, it can fuel these initiatives once they are underway so that insurers can deliver a consistently outstanding experience for customers and agents alike.
Sathya Sethuraman (sathyanarayanan.sethuraman@uipath.com) is director of the Global Insurance Practice UiPath. You also can find this contributor on LinkedIn and Twitter: @sethusathya
These opinions are the author’s own.
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