One of the main challenges insurance companies face is a fight to remain profitable and innovative whilst trying to maintain low cost offerings, says Guy Kirkwood.
When a low price on its own isn’t necessarily enough to secure a customer’s interest, a combination of building customer relationships and delivering cutting edge digital services is what keeps consumers engaged and loyal.
While insurers can’t afford to be held back by legacy technology and administration tasks such as claims processing and policy administration, technology now means that this burden can be consigned to the past.
Through Robotic Process Automation (RPA) these activities can be completed even more efficiently and accurately, while at the same time, vital hours are returned to employees to focus on the critical tasks that will give their business a competitive edge. Now that an employee no longer has to manually chase third parties for outstanding payments, they can concentrate on executing data analytics and building a stronger customer service proposition.
Many in the industry are already taking full advantage of the technology and one of the world’s leading insurance brands is seeing significant improvements in multiple areas of the business as a result of automating repetitive tasks. Previously management had found time and effort was being wasted processing credit note refunds. However since implementing RPA, they have seen a total saving of 156 hours per month as robots process the same amount of refunds in a quarter of the time that humans can. The same provider was also experiencing difficulty in reducing the time and effort that was being spent registering application forms. The time taken to complete such a task can be halved, a huge boost to operational efficiency and a game changer for both businesses and their employees.
The freedom that an RPA deployment gives individual employees to offer real value to an organisation is priceless and a real opportunity to drive more than just operational efficiencies – it is a chance to make significant changes to the way an organisation works.
In such a fast-evolving environment, insurers need a clear vision of the future, and how best to position their firm for sustained long-term success. They need to strengthen customer relationships and create proactive retention strategies; things that are only possible if employees have the capacity to do so. Robotics is giving insurers the chance to make this a reality.
Guy Kirkwood is COO at UiPath
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