Modern enterprises are on their way to upgrading automation capabilities beyond conventional automation of manual tasks. In their perennial pursuit to improve operations and offer top-notch customer experience, they are now adopting hyperautomation initiatives. Gartner predicts the market for software enabling hyperautomation to grow at a CAGR of 11.9 percent, touching almost $1.04 trillion. Productivity has always been a deciding factor, and by 2025 it will be one of CEOs’ top five strategic business priorities.
Experts believe it is essential to move beyond Robotic Process Automation is important while defining automation journeys to deliver end-to-end automation to augment business processes. The key is to adopt hyperautomation and radically transform the business even in the most challenging times. The need for digital transformation has fuelled the demand for hyperautomation across industries, including banking and finance.
The insurance sector has been one of the early adopters of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), and machine learning (ML) which played a pivotal role in managing complex tasks during the pandemic. Hyperautomation helps them manage risks, minimize fraud, and enhance customer service.
Need of Hyperautomation in Insurtech Companies
Let\’s dive deep into the world of hyperautomation to understand why it is a critical enabler for Insutech companies.
Insurtech companies brought new capabilities to their digital initiatives to respond to changing customer expectations. During a survey by PwC, 41% of consumers confessed they are likely to switch providers due to a lack of digital capabilities.
New entrants dramatically impact the insurance landscape with diverse digital-first approaches, faster business model innovation, and agility. The insurtech phenomenon refuses to slow down, forcing traditional companies to let go of their risk-averse culture and embrace new trends and technologies. Traditional companies like American Family Insurance took the cue and acquired Insurtech company Bold Penguin to meet the wide-ranging needs of customers.
With modern companies pushing customers towards user-friendly digital channels, 61% of respondents in a Gartner survey consider changing consumer expectations as their top concern. The focus is now on digital transformation to build real-time, sophisticated digital experiences that enable better service and customer engagement. The answer lies in hyperautomation!
Hyperautomation in banking and finance paves the path for radical innovation
Hyperautomation technologies ensure insurance companies have the digital foundation to operate effectively and provide top-notch customer experience. After all, digital data is the key enabler, and it helps companies overcome the hurdles of data collection and improve operational efficiency. Hyperautomation changes the way they collect customer data and internal data. It thus plays a crucial role in dealing with claims processing and customer services challenges.
Challenges in claims processing
Claims have been one of the most significant cost components by far, and 90% of consumers believe effective claims processing has been a deciding factor when choosing providers. Claim processing can be excruciatingly stressful unless automated to eliminate errors and improve operational speed and productivity. Hyperautomation comes to the rescue here since it eliminates human intervention and offers incredible benefits to insurance companies.
Traditional companies often struggled with:
- High operational expenses due to manual claims processing
- Lack of consistency and accuracy in case of claims for a large customer base
- Inability to effectively and quickly respond to customer queries
With hyperautomation, they can now:
- Collate data from multiple systems in one go
- Compile email data and verify claims data
- Enable cognitive automation to analyze images, audio, and natural language texts effectively.
Automated claims processing is helping companies accelerate the business process through robotic process automation or RPA bots. They are now able to respond quickly to customer queries while filing claims. Lemonade, a peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance firm, and auto insurance giant- Progressive, have been using AI and chatbots to streamline the claims experience and process claims in just a few seconds.
Data-enriched processes go a long way in managing complex tasks like policy cancellations and client onboarding. With these processes, RPA bots store and collect diverse information about customers, which is accurate and reliable. Hyperautomation also allows companies to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a feature that helps them scan and update data from registration forms into appropriate systems.
US healthcare company CVS Health recently developed a new system to streamline cross-functional, manual tasks like receipts, payments, and issue resolution. The system relies on a combination of AI, RPA, machine learning, data analytics, and natural language processes (NLP) to deal with errors and exceptions and speed up processes. While minimizing the risk associated with human errors, the company has been able to curtail administration time and costs, deliver a competitive differentiator by curating personalized benefits scenarios, and onboard new accounts efficiently.
Challenges in customer service
Insurance customers today comprise millennials, Gen Xers, and Gen Yers in large numbers. As a result, customer interaction preferences are changing, too, with 27 percent of Gen Yers and 23 percent of Gen Xers wanting to interact with their insurers through digital self-service. There is a growing need for consistent information and service levels across channels and touchpoints. Modern insurance companies are conscious of these changing requirements and have started employing advanced analytics to get deeper insights for curating top-notch customer experiences and more personalized offerings.
Traditional companies have always grappled with issues about the efficacy of:
- Risk assessment and document verification
- Customer onboarding process
- Responding to customer queries regarding policy coverage, deductibles, and other relevant concerns
With hyperautomation technologies, they can now:
- Process documents and extract essential data using intelligent document processing (IDP) tools
- Authenticate customers via facial recognition and speed up the KYC (know your customer) process
- Respond to queries through a 24/7 customer service managed by AI-powered chatbots
- Assist in situations like First Notice of Loss (FNOL) with the help of robots equipped with language processing capabilities
- Respond with empathy as robots evolve and analyze changing patterns in customer behavior through advances in emotion recognition and sensing technology.
- Ensure increased personalization by getting a unified profile view of customers.
Life insurance company Ethos relies on over 300,000 data points to determine the eligibility of potential customers and offers life insurance policies in minutes. On the other hand, Fabric, with its new app, is turning a new leaf in the insurance sector with value-added services that simplify parents’ financial planning. It took care of the hard stuff, too, like wills and shared finances, to ensure the long-term economic well-being of families.
Time is essential when offering stellar customer service, and Hippo Insurance Services understands it well. Known to provide tailored quotes in seconds, Hippo deploys end-to-end process automation to enable customers to complete the purchase process in less than 4 minutes. In the absence of lengthy questionnaires and a collaboration with an extensive list of lenders and servicing companies, Hippo has delivered a seamless purchase experience with proactive, consumer-focused offerings.
Summing up
Digital transformation with hyperautomation and cognitive technologies is now helping insurance companies design customer journeys from scratch. Many tools and capabilities await those eager to enhance business and processing efficiencies with hyperautomation. Companies willing to pivot and embrace hyperautomation in banking and finance will see remarkable benefits beyond efficiency gains.
Digitize the insurance value chain with Trigent
We have been helping companies deploy hyperautomation in banking and finance as part of their digital transformation initiatives. With end-to-end AI-powered automation, Trigent has been enabling them to reshape business models to offer digital convenience to their customers.
Our technology experts can help you enthuse simplicity and swiftness in your business processes to ensure customer-centricity across the value chain.
Author
