Insurance is renewing how they process renewals with the help of bots

It is not a new phenomenon, but it is apparent that there is a challenge in the insurance sector when it comes to smoothing out processes that have been part of a business for some time.

Renewals is a particularly sticky one and with incumbent systems that connect to client management, paperwork creation and payment systems for example, this can be a needlessly tedious process managed by a human operator, but an expensive and involved system to supersede completely.

A recent client project, has proven that getting bot to assist in this onerous processing, can not only save ten times the processing time, but can be accurate every time and of course save the seat cost implicated in this very robotic task.

This simple use case leveraged the current system, but helped to lean the process a little, allowing a complex process for an operator to be done quickly and simply by the bot.

This use case, deals with not only straight cash renewals, but also instalment renewals, cash rebroke renewals and instalment rebroke renewals, covering all their different renewal processes involved. All driven from their own source MIS data that allows the bot to decide which process is appropriate so run it end to end.

This then allows the bot to produce the paperwork for the customer, update their policy and account and of course take the payment that is applicable to the policy type and renewal type.

The target for this is to allow a single bot to release 8 FTE to other duties. This is where they need the capacity and allow them to expand their overall capacity in the business.

All of this is achieved using RPA (Robotic process automation).An admin robot designed and trained to do the task as needed, again and again. Importantly, there was no infrastructure changes needed, no changes in the core process was needed, we just sat with their matter experts and designed the bot, even proving it first with a proof of concept.

If any process is following a set of logical steps on a computer that is operated by a human, then the chances are it can be automated by an admin robot. If this takes up significant time and is repeated regularly, then these are obviously great candidates.

Interestingly, we also find that the humans currently doing the work are totally bought into the process as well. Surprising when you may think a bot ‘might take their jobs’! But that has simply not been the case in all the projects we have seen. Our bots simply take that really rubbish task away that everyone hated.

Our experience is that they are forward thinking businesses and realise that their valuable team can then do work that may be new or expanding roles, and luckily we have been working  with a some great businesses in this sector including Towergate Insurance and Europa Group to mention a couple.

As this technology is a proven space now, it is time to see where a bot can be brought in and tried out without risk, this is what we have done and the excitement that this builds is great. Why not renew the way you look at your processes?

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