Hyperautomation – an integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that discovers, validates and automates business processes to maximize cross-departmental functionality and efficiency – is exponentially increasing the impact of discrete automations within the insurance industry. 

Because of the data-heavy nature of the insurance sector, hyperautomation can have a big impact on the speed, accuracy and efficiency of many insurance functions. 

Here are the six top insurance industry functions that can benefit from hyperautomation.

Policy Underwriting, Pricing and Management

Insurance underwriting is all about assessing and managing risk. In the past, determining risk involved an arduous data entry and analysis process – functions that can now be accomplished quickly and efficiently with various forms of automation. 

The use of automation for insurance allows businesses to go beyond traditional data comparisons, rapidly gathering and analyzing information from a variety of sources and across multiple platforms to determine each customer’s level of risk. This improves the accuracy of risk forecasts and delivers faster responses – improving customer satisfaction. 

Hyperautomation can also help:

• Automate the evaluation of customer records and data from third parties, claim histories and other documentation
• Chart coverage data and create reports about claim histories
• Determine appropriate pricing based on evaluated risks, implementation costs, and customer profiles

Once prices have been set and a policy has been issued, ongoing management can also be labor- and document-intensive. Hyperautomation can dispatch most of the tedium of policy management by:

• Maintaining documentation seamlessly across all channels
• Extracting, sorting and producing reports
• Issuing, adjusting, renewing and sometimes cancelling policies
• Providing policy renewal reminders

Claims Processing

Investigating, processing and making decisions about a claim is very time-consuming. Delays can lead to customer dissatisfaction and unwanted churn. Hyperautomation can drastically reduce the turnaround time for delivering claims decisions and increase the accuracy of results.

When it comes to claims processing, hyperautomation can reinvent processes to:

• Guide customers through the claims submission process
• Gather, standardize, sort and evaluate data from multiple sources and formats
• Predict the cost of the claim based on coverage levels and the data provided
• Verify the authenticity of information and reports
• Escalate cases to human adjusters, if necessary
• Automatically deliver claim updates

Regulatory Compliance

Strict industry regulations are often the source of information bottlenecks and processing delays. As these regulations are subject to frequent change, companies can find themselves working hard to pivot quickly within an infrastructure encumbered by volumes of paperwork. 

Hyperautomation can help insurance providers eliminate the delays and errors that result from ever-changing regulations by making it quicker and easier to:

• Monitor and track regulatory changes
• Generate compliance reports
• Assess process compliance via process mining technologies

Fraud Detection

Unfortunately, instances of insurance fraud continue to rise. Human investigators are limited by time, distance and the sheer volume of information. 

Hyperautomation is essential for detecting insurance fraud, especially in a highly technological landscape. It can help:

• Screen claims for discrepancies or red flags
• Analyze customer behavior patterns to detect anomalies
• Identify false reports or exaggerations
• Implement blockchain safeguards to prevent customers from filing claims with multiple companies

Document and Data Management

Each insurance transaction both requires and produces large quantities of documentation. Processing, organizing, sorting and storing all this information is time-consuming and unwieldy. 

Hyperautomation is the organization-scale equivalent of condensing the information contained in a building full of large filing cabinets onto a large-capacity thumb drive, making it easy to:

• Obtain, filter and analyze large quantities of data
• Understand the content and context of the documentation
• Quickly and accurately respond to internal and customer queries
• Forecast future outcomes based on current and historical data

Customer Service

As in many other industries, insurance companies have room for substantial improvements to customer services. Long wait times, frustrating phone menu loops, and anxiety-producing delays in claims processing all lead customers to become dissatisfied with insurance companies, leading them to seek out other providers. 

Hyperautomation can speed and smooth customer service processes across departments to:

• Offer customized plans and services, including peer-to-peer and pay-as-you-go
• Facilitate information gathering, customer authentication and document processing/ verification
• Provide 24/7 customer service to millions of customers in multiple languages

Conclusion

The digital transformation in the insurance industry that has begun to unfold offers enormous benefits. Considering the huge quantities of data, documentation and regulation that the insurance industry must contend with, being able to automate tedious, time-consuming processes comes as a relief.  

Hyperautomation for insurance unifies processes and experiences to increase accuracy, speed, productivity and efficiency – benefiting both the companies and their customers. 

Get started today with Sutherland Prodigy, our advanced hyperautomation platform that combines analytics and business intelligence to transform disparate back-office operations into new, effective digital workflows.