Why automation is improving the claims experience

When computers first came out almost 70 years ago, the insurance industry was one of the first to embrace the new technology. However, it stopped there. Today, companies still mostly work with legacy systems and the industry is known to reluctantly embrace ideas of tech innovation. But with the COVID-19 pandemic further digitizing many tasks, and the rise of the insurtech industry, insurers must prove they can balance customer experience and automation to remain competitive. As a result, the insurtech sector is innovating faster than ever before. The insurance industry and key players are becoming more digitized, using AI, automation, bots, and other apps to make property and casualty (P&C) claims processing faster to keep up with competition.

Generally, claims processing is known to be a long, manual transaction. Customers become frustrated because of the complex methods to get pay-outs from insurers for claims. On the insurer's side, investigations for large claims take a lot of time. The solution? Digitization. Speeding up processing times is the solution for the needs of today's market. This is where insurtechs come in to provide solutions where established carriers are struggling to keep up. 

In the past, and still prevalent today, a claims adjuster is the one investigating claims on behalf of the carrier. This process is known to be a point of great frustration for the customer. However, with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA), more insurers can speed things up, resulting in a better reputation and more reliable claims processing. Innovative solutions speed up case handling, increase capacity and reduce wait times for the customers. Automating menial tasks and utilizing talent in complex and more effective tasks can create more space for innovation. In addition, the increased process efficiency leads to cost savings. This affects key performance indicators (KPIs). Overall business performance improves when operation efficiency improves. It allows insurers to gain competitive advantages and increases customer ratings, while also simplifying operations and reducing claims processing costs.

However, there is a trade-off between becoming fully automated and having a human touch. Customers want to know they're going to be taken care of by a human; someone who knows the struggles and can comfort them over the phone. Reputable insurers know how to do both, while making sure the customer experience is human-centric. 

With Human-Centered Service Design, it's possible to understand the processing environment through the lens of the customer. Then the process challenge is fine-tuned to identify the broader impact to tangential functions and business objectives. After that, it's important to create automation solutions that solve business and user pain points before prototyping and testing targeted solutions in preparation for solution mobilization and launch. 

When used together, service design and digital engineering approaches take a comprehensive, human-centric approach, enabling increased efficiency and quality as a way of improving the employee and customer experiences. 

Digitizing and automating insurance processes can be a complex process, but with the right strategic partner, it can help increase your bottom-line, while executing your strategy and achieving your goals.

This blog entry has been reposted with permission from Capco.