09 Apr why shorter life cycle of insurance claims is critical to the industry
Customer expectations are growing enormously in the Insurance industry. This industry being highly data intensive most of the processes are largely tedious and time consuming. Customers are not really ready to wait a lot for getting the claim approved and this is the main challenge.
Shortening the lifecycle of insurance claims is the main goal which insurance brands thrive to achieve. Competing in a highly packed marketplace is tougher if Insurance strategists are not adopting an innovative mindset which drives the business towards higher ROI.
An insurance company would succeed if operation is smooth with automated workflows. KPIs which indicate the success factor are claim settlement cycle time, claims processed per claim employee and last but not the least cost per claim.
Claims Processing Challenges in a Nutshell – This would explain why shorter lifecycle of insurance claims is critical to the Industry.
- Tall Operating Costs: Much of the Insurance companies still drown in huge data inflow and meaningless claims processing activities. Claims processing is saddled with arduous and onerous chores such as manual data gathering and data entry. This largely results in errors, skewed records, obvious erratic service delivery and ultimately enormous spike in Operating Costs.
- Divergent Legacy Systems: Functionality requires constant and rigorous updation; most of the contemporary claims, policy administration and billing systems have already crossed their workable limits and hence lacks updated functionality. We see a lack in workflow flexibility and configurability as well which worsens the situation. In simple terms, data is often siloed across disparate platforms and are unavailable in real time when it is most needed.
- Compliance Adherence: Compliance is an undisputed prerequisite on which insurance companies and customers place a definite value. Introduction of brand-New policies and regulations is a frequent practice and most of the insurance companies find it difficult to keep up with changing regulations while implementing efficient processes.
- Deftly Meeting Customer Demands: Faster service delivery is a genuine demand, and this is further accelerated by mobile and online services. In the case of insurance claims process, few Most notable barriers to enhanced customer satisfaction are slow speed of claims settlement and lack of process transparency.
Advantages of a shortened Insurance Claims Lifecycle:
Processing costs and payments represent nearly 80% of a policyholder’s premium. Longer claims settlement cycle result in higher costs and it has a negative impact on profitability. There are some visible advantages of shortening life cycle of insurance claims and keeping processing costs under control, and this includes freedom for insurance business to price its premiums competitively without forgoing profitability.
Faring beyond Customer Expectations
Growing customer expectations always put stress on insurers to offer quicker claims processing. Customers are equally stressed during every claim moment. Satisfaction and retention scores would go high if claims are handled well. Negative claims experience scores are highest for those Claims which take more than 20 days to resolve – Accenture says. Shortening claims life cycle can considerably improve and strengthen customer loyalty.
Integrated Digital Infrastructure Advantage
Customer centricity is the key to thriving in this highly competitive insurance field, modern players are greatly eating up the market share with innovative business models. Insurance companies are increasingly integrating digital technologies into their operations. McKinsey says that a digital claims function can drive a 20% increase in customer satisfaction scores and 25-30% reduction in claims expenses.
Standing out from Competition
Insurance companies are racing towards being more customer centric so as to gain a competitive advantage. Increased levels of automation can be achieved by leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA). Innovative business models can considerably increase the speed with which claim pay-outs are made and many of these focus on fast and efficient approval processes.
How Nuvento brilliantly gives a makeover to Claims Processing Workflow
Nuvento AI claims solution noticeably reduces claims processing time. Speed and efficiency of operations is one area which benefits the most with Artificial intelligence deployment in Insurance business. Claims embody the largest solo cost to insurers. This is considered one of the most significant operational factors for P & L. Efficiency and ease of claims process is another critical factor which has great influence on developing customer sentiment, loyalty and delight.
Key Features which would efficiently alter your Claims Processing:
- Automation of Unstructured Data: Leverage AI-based document automation technology and convert unstructured documents into homogeneous files which can be analysed and interpreted by our process robots. Minimise human intervention by quickly automating scanned claim documents in different formats.
- Low-touch Integration: Enjoy quicker, cost effective and easier deployment which supports almost all legacy systems as wells as cross application processes. No real need for aggressive integration with existing business applications.
- Boundless Capacity to Scale: A fool-proof claims automation system is always capable of scaling according to changing demand scenarios. Whenever additional claims processing tasks pop up you can easily add those to the corresponding available windows which are designed for quicker automation. In this way periodic peak scheduling is efficiently managed which leads to significant cost savings.
- Furthered Adjudication: Businesses can save substantial time by speedily automating claims adjudication tasks. You can easily activate the process as soon as claim enters the system, and this allows you to set up server-side triggers which continuously check events running in the background. Also, this helps to invoke task automations whenever a relevant action befalls.
Improvement in claims processing methodology is quite a luring niche which has driven investments and growth of Insuretech solutions over the last decade. Workflow automation and visualization technologies continuously transform the insurance ecosystem.
Now let us have a look at few impactful technologies which would shorten the lifecycle of Insurance Claims Process. One is Visual Claims, and another is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
How to achieve shorter life cycle of insurance claims using Visual Claims
Visual insurance claims technology is an emerging platform which would transform claims processing efficiency in a relatively short span of time. Visual engagement platform which enables visual claims allows customers to transmit claim videos and images to contact centre agents for quick incident assessment. The video element gets integrated into the current workflow, completely in sync with existing systems, and this is how a shorter life cycle of insurance claims process is achieved.
Traditionally, insurance customers used to get frustrated because of tedious and irritating back and forth chain of emails and follow-ups to get a claim processed. In addition to this headache, customers had to wait for a longer duration to get a claim approved, since there was a requirement for a site visit by the insurance officers.
Lengthy process as it seems to be. Shoddy customer Service would deteriorate the brand image in the long run, no doubts. Implementing visual claims would alleviate much of the factors which cause customer dissatisfaction. Here, the adjuster has quick and transparent access to real-time visual information which are critical to the incident such as position of the vehicle, road conditions, scope of damage and other relevant information. This quickly captured data serves as a strong tool to take quicker decisions at many critical moments. Also, this data can be used to expedite and solve any disagreements which arise in the future.
Visual claims are known to reduce the resolution time to few minutes compared to the previous time duration of 3-5 working days. Key benefits include:
- Cost savings
- Enhanced customer satisfaction
- Quicker resolutions
- Faster implementation
- Automated workflows
Transformational Impact of Nuvento Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in Claims Administration
RPA always brings the much sought out speed, accuracy and cost-efficiency to make claims processing a success and streamline the associated workflows. The impact of RPA can be summarized as follows:
- Expedited Claims Processing: Shortened processing time, improved claims adjudication, faster task completion etc can be achieved by RPA deployment. This frees up claims processors to carry out tasks which would require human decision making.
- Process Eminence and Accuracy: RPA makes processes quick, accurate and efficient and monotonous tasks such as data entry, validation etc are fully taken care of by process robots. Upon identification of inaccuracies, the robot alerts claim processor for further investigation.
- Compliance Adherence: RPA contributes towards enhancing insurance governance and compliance. RPA platform provides detailed activity logs in which each claims process step is well documented, and this makes it easier for insurance companies to keep a check on regulatory compliance.
So, to keep up with growing customer demands insurance companies have to constantly adopt newer technologies especially the ones which provide maximum operational efficiency in terms of shortening insurance claims lifecycle.