Automating Insurance Claims Processing with RPA

What comes to your mind when you hear the term ‘Insurance’?

It must be the visual of standing in line for hours or going through loads of paperwork. Well, this was exactly how the insurance sector used to operate until Insurtech took over.

Insurtech refers to the process of incorporating the use of advanced technology into the insurance industry to provide better customer service and improve work efficiency.

According to Grand View Research, The global insurtech market size was valued at USD 2.72 billion in 2020. It is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.8% from 2021 to 2028. This rapid growth is the result of the increasing need of digitizing the insurance industry and improving communication with their clients for better and faster outcomes.

Today, we will be learning more about one of the most important technologies of Insurtech, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and how it is used for automating the insurance claim process.

Let’s dig in.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation is a software technology governed by business logic and structured inputs to automate business processes. RPA tools help in building, deploying, and managing software that interprets human actions. RPA software helps in generating an automatic response to an email and deploys thousands of bots, each programmed to automate jobs in an ERP system.

According to Grand View Research, the global Robotic Process Automation market size was valued at USD 1.57 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.8% from 2021 to 2028.

Automating Insurance Claims Processing with RPA

The increasing rate of insurance fraud, unsatisfied customers, and most importantly errors in the insurance claim process was amongst the top factors behind incorporating the use of technology in the insurance sector.

No insurance company can afford to make any errors in claim processing. This is why a growing number of companies are trusting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate the insurance claims process.

Before RPA, insurance companies faced these problems in claim processing:

1. Manual data entry: Claims processing requires much paperwork and data entry. Before RPA, these tasks were performed manually, which made them prone to errors.

2. Time-consuming task: Insurance agents spend around 10% — 25% of their time performing repetitive tasks required for the claim processing.

3. Disparate mediums: The information was processed and collected through a disparate medium which created a lack of accountability and ownership.

4. Data security: Because of using different software for different purposes, it was difficult to secure data and even restore data.

5. Regulation compliance: The software was incapable of updating the latest changes in any law or regulation, which posed a serious challenge for companies to remain compliant when operating in different states and countries.

Benefits of Automating Insurance Claims Processing with RPA

Speeds up the process

Claims processing requires insurance companies to gather a vast amount of information from several sources, creating exhaustive quantities of data.

RPA speeds up this process by integrating all the different claim processing information from multiple sources without any human intervention and bringing a structure into it. This also results in high customer satisfaction.

No room for errors

RPA automates the manually intensive processes like extraction of data, complex error tracking, claim verification, and integration of claim-relevant data sources.

This automation leads to quick, efficient, and precise claims adjudication, that too without any human intervention, leaving no scope for errors.

Higher compliance with laws and regulations

RPA allows the insurance companies to control and monitor every record on an ongoing basis without worrying about errors or missing data.

Furthermore, the RPA bot documents every step of claims processing and updates it according to the latest changes which ensure higher compliance with every law and regulation.

Top 5 Business Processes to Automate with RPA

 From Accenture to Deloitte, IBM, Adobe, Xerox, Dell, EY, Whirlpool, Wipro, KPMG, and LinkedIn, among others, more and more businesses from all fields are leveraging the power of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) today. RPA technology has use cases in every industry today.

Unlike humans, it is far more efficient and innovative, works 24X7, and offers incredible flexibility in execution.

Something as simple as automating your payroll processing tasks can empower your HR department and ensure timely payment.

If you want to leverage the power of this cool technology but aren’t sure what processes to automate, here are the top ones that businesses most commonly do:

1. ERP Data Entry (Maximize the productivity of your back-office staff)

Manual data entry is one of the most time-consuming and error-prone processes that can impact the entire workflow of your business. If this process is driven manually in your business, chances are that your back office staff will spend most of their time doing the tedious ERP journal entries.

By automating your entire ERP data entry process, you can redirect their attention to more strategic tasks that are core to your business niche.

RPA bots do not make errors or get tired after a while of doing tedious entries. They will ensure more accurate data entry for you with no downtime (since they can work with 100% capacity without any breaks) and require minimal IT resources.

2. Contact Center Operations (Maximize the productivity of your contact centers)

Contact centers work with lots and lots of customer data. They deal with customer requests and queries, loads of calls, and client profiles. On top of that, they have to respond to customer complaints constantly.

When all of this is handled manually, it can become hugely chaotic and overload your employees, thereby affecting their productivity and quality of work.

RPA bots are versatile.

They can help you manage and analyze large volumes of customer data, enabling your employees to attend to customers in a better way. By collecting and analyzing input data from incoming calls, they can handle note taking seamlessly for you. They can predict customers’ needs and behaviors precisely to enhance customer satisfaction.

Upgrade the credibility of your customer service with Robotic Process Automation.

3. Employee onboarding and offboarding (Maximize the productivity of your HR and IT departments)

The process of onboarding and offboarding is labor and time-intensive, especially for the HR department. Training and induction is the first step in onboarding an employee. It also increases the workload of the IT department. New profiles and user accounts are needed to be created. IT equipment is issued.

Similarly, employee offboarding also involves lots and lots of activities and paperwork. Handling these tasks manually leads to unnecessary delays and errors, thereby impacting productivity.

By implementing RPA, you can ensure a smooth, timely, consistent, and error-free onboarding and onboarding process.

Ready to make your new hire 100% equipped from day 1?

4. Accounting reconciliation (Maximize the productivity of your Accounts department)

Securing the reliability of records and balances is important to identify errors and fraudulent activities. Accounts reconciliation ensures to do this.

By letting RPA bots handle your accounts reconciliation process, you can ensure high accuracy.

5. Payroll management (Maximize the productivity of your HR department)

Payroll calculations and formulae are rule-based, which makes the payroll management process a perfect candidate for Robotic Process Automation.

The manual payroll calculation method is tedious, time-consuming, repetitive, and involves lots of human effort. It is common to see data inaccuracies and payment delays in places where payroll management is highly manual-driven.

By automating your payroll management process, you can empower your HR department to handle large data entries, and carry payroll management tasks accurately and avoid payment delays.

How to Choose Which Processes are Ideal for Automation

With such incredible benefits, every business would want to jump onto the RPA bandwagon. But, bot deployment must not be a blind process. For your automation to be successful and yield you better ROI, it’s important to choose the right business processes to automate.

Here are some excellent ways to help you identify which processes are appropriate for Robotic Process Automation:

Look for manual processes that are highly dependent on employee involvement

A business process is suitable for automation if it is time-consuming, repetitive, and needs employee attention. For instance, making a customer data entry. Automating such manual and repetitive tasks will ensure faster execution with minimized errors.

Identify high-volume tasks that need round-the-clock attention

Like most businesses, it must be common for you to receive a high volume of orders and complaints round-the-clock, even outside of office hours. But, if you completely rely on manual processes, you won’t be able to address these tasks 24x7. Consider integrating RPA bots into these high-volume tasks that need to be addressed regardless of the time.

See if the tasks are definable, consistent, and occur the same way every time

Look for rule-based, standardized tasks that occur consistently. The rule is that if you can define a task easily, you can automate it. Back-office tasks are best suited for automation since they are standardized and highly repetitive.

Ready to Leverage The Power of RPA?

Start by understanding your business processes and their objectives.

Having a bird’s eye view of your entire business workflow would help you choose the most ideal processes for automation.

Do not make the mistake of implementing RPA in a rush by choosing processes that are flawed to start with.

Companies leading in Robotic Process Automation like Jellyfish Technologies can help you pick the best processes that are fit for automation.