Integrate claims to transform decision-making, information-sharing and customer experience

Claims is that one moment of truth between insurer and customer that has the potential to build a lifetime of loyalty or guarantee churn come renewal time. John Bailey, international solutions consulting manager for Blue Prism, discusses why some insurers find it difficult to deliver a timely, seamless experience to customers and how automation can relieve the burden of unnecessary admin to help the organisation’s people unleash their creativity and empathy.

The event of a claim is an opportunity for insurers to build trust and cement client relationships. It is the bedrock of customer experience for insurers. However, all too often, carriers’ own business processes stand in the way of delivering the excellence they are capable of. Legacy technologies, departmental silos and stretched budgets can all make it difficult to deliver, and frustrating for all parties.

It is frustrating for the client, who knows it is possible to create joined-up, seamless experiences in many other aspects of their lives—so why not here? It’s frustrating for claims professionals who want to be able to offer the very best level of service but are hamstrung by their own organisational hurdles.

To discover how to overcome the hurdles, break down barriers to great customer experience and manage under even the most constrained circumstances—such as the rapid swing to remote working caused by COVID-19—Intelligent Insurer spoke to John Bailey, international solutions consulting manager for Blue Prism.

He explains how refining and enhancing claims automation is the first step towards a holistic and market-leading customer experience.

Why is now the time to be tackling the disjointed claims experience?
What has changed since the pandemic is that most of us now work remotely and many of us will continue to do so. This means when people are looking for a certain level of service, they’ll be looking for it in a different way: they’ll be using devices almost exclusively.

The contact centre has always been a big part of the customer journey, but now most people won’t be talking to another person. In whatever manner they want to do something, it has to be done seamlessly, across the omnichannel. And still, whatever they do, it has to feel personal to them. This is going to shift the way insurers do things.

How can insurers make their claims transformation a manageable task?
Everyone has already talked about digitising the claims process, from quote through to policy and then first notification of loss (FNOL). But insurers need to focus on being partners with their customers from cradle to grave.

This is especially true of healthcare, but healthcare leads to other insurance products. We are moving to the model of the insurer ecosystem where they can offer the right product at the right time—integrating gym partnerships, smartwatch data, and loyalty schemes from retail, for example.
That full insurance experience can seem a huge change, but within that ecosystem, claims management is the perfect place to start.

This is where automation really comes in. People might think they need to rip everything out and replace it with something more modern. A large, legacy insurer may say it can’t hope to emulate something as slick as the Lemonade model, but it is possible.

It’s a question of connecting the smart new front end to the older back end—how you bridge the two is where automation comes in. You start with the area that gives the customer the biggest benefit: claims. We have to unlock how we can make parts of that—from FNOL to payment—as slick as possible.

How do we extract the most value from growing automation?
What automation allows you to do is replicate what humans have been doing—and also what they should never have been doing in the first place. A lot of claims processing is just that: processing. If you reduce the burden, what’s left?

They’re talking to the customer (albeit not necessarily using voice), and having a nice customer interaction—generally making use of the way humans interact. Humans are great at understanding insights and can think outside the box.

Equally, artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just about decision trees or programming a piece of logic. AI is also about judgement—it can be taught. That way, there is a growing confidence level about using AI to help make decisions and it can be used to replace some underwriting functions where it makes sense.

For AI or automation to truly work, the value is realised only when people do not have to perform a process because they’ve been replaced by something cheaper. Instead, those people can be doing something that adds more to the business, such as opening up new business lines and creating shareholder value. Automation puts the emphasis back on how you want to make the most of people.

What do you hope attendees will take away from this webinar?
The first is that automation has been around for some time, but the pandemic has shown that we now need to take it seriously. I would like any organisation to focus on a new business model where a third of the work is done by people, a third by a digital workforce and a third is completed by the IT systems underneath. That’s what the future looks like.

The other element is that this new business model for insurers is nothing to do with insurance itself. It’s about being a life partner, letting people live healthier lives through insurers being able to stitch together partnerships and propositions. That will be possible only by having automation take over processes so the humans can deal with propositions.

Join Blue Prism, Liberty Specialty Markets, AXA XL and RSA for the live webinar “Integrate Claims to Transform Decision-Making, Information Sharing and CX” (Thursday June 24, 2021 @ 3pm BST). Register here now to join the discussion.