Industry Specifics: RPA and Insurance

Every type of industry has unique challenges and desires when approaching the table for robotic process automation. The world of insurance and insurance providers stands out to us from the usual business model. It’s an industry that is ripe for automation, which can only lead to happier customers.

Whether you’re talking about life, home, auto, or health insurance (plus many other kinds), there are three major areas of the insurance business workflow that could be revolutionized through RPA: underwriting, policy administration, and claims management.

For the uninitiated, underwriting is the task of assessing the risks and situations of a potential client. Usually, this involves matching the client’s information with rules already in place. For example, a 28-year-old male driver applying for insurance on his used car will be matched up with the rules that pertain to his gender, age bracket, and make and model of his car. This matching can all be automated.

Once a client becomes a policyholder, they can file a claim at any time: for an automobile accident, a trip to the emergency room, a case of water damage in the home, etc. Claims management is a huge part of insurance which often involves gathering information from multiple parties and filing a lot – A LOT – of paperwork. And where there’s routine paperwork filing, there’s opportunity for automation. 

Both underwriting and claims management fall under the general umbrella of policy administration. That umbrella also encompasses finance & billing, customer service, and document management. Many of these tasks fit the characteristics of processes perfect for RPA, as they do in any business.

Insurance companies are usually running with many systems online, some of them legacy systems, so RPA’s ability to communicate between systems is a great benefit. Flexibility and scalability are also key benefits of RPA in the industry. Larger companies that operate nationwide must keep up with different regulations from every state. If regulations change (which they often do), companies need the flexibility to change with them.  RPA can be changed almost instantly, which is flexibility that traditional BPO services can’t provide. RPA’s scalability comes into play especially when natural disasters strike and hundreds or thousands of claims must be dealt with at the same time. No need to train new workers to handle the overflow when you can increase the number of RPA robots handling the claims.

Among its other benefits for the insurance industry in particular, RPA can:

• Lower the cost of claims processing by saving agents’ time

• Shorten the turnaround time for claims

• Allow agents to pull information from many systems while on a customer service call

• Link services together for policyholders to access their information through a self-service portal

There is a desire to transform insurance from a policy-centric industry to a customer-centric industry, and RPA has the potential to greatly influence that. UiPath is a leading RPA provider with clients in insurance; find out today why UiPath is the best option for you.