Insurance Processes Need Digital Transformation to Thrive in the New Normal

Virender Jeet, Senior Vice President (Sales & Marketing / Products), Newgen Software

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Insurance Processes Need Digital Transformation to Thrive in the New Normal

COVID-19 and Insurance Industry

COVID-19 has disrupted the way businesses operate. Most of the organizations have shifted to a remote working environment. There have been changes in consumer behavior, supply chain and logistics management, and government mandates, to name a few.

The insurance sector is not immune to these rapidly fluctuating market conditions. Insurance agents have been overloaded with queries about health coverage plans and term insurance policies given the uncertainties due to the pandemic. There has also been a rise in fraudulent claim requests.

Research suggests that the financial performance of the insurance companies, however, has been plummeting, with the absence of face-to-face interactions acting as a spoilsport. What insurance companies need is a quick adoption of the digital-first approach to survive and thrive in this new era of social distancing.

Weathering the Storm with Digital Transformation

COVID-19 has propelled insurance companies to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. Insurers today can leverage the following solutions, built on a digital automation platform with low code and cloud capabilities, for increased agility and remote operations:

  • Touchless Onboarding – New customers can be onboarded within minutes while operating in a remote distributed environment by facilitating agents to capture the policy application and relevant documents online and via mobile applications
  • Policy Underwriting – The underwriting process can be simplified with auto-allocation rules to eliminate manual intervention, calculate risk scores, and make faster, more informed decisions, resulting in instant policy issuance for straight-through pass cases
  • Claims Processing – Field agents can be empowered to perform manual tasks digitally, including automated case routing based on workload and experience, and real-time tracking and management of submitted claims to increase visibility and reduce fraudulent claims
  • Policy Servicing – The service request lifecycle can be automated and integrated with the policy administration system to auto-fetch details related to each policy, thereby reducing the turnaround time, diminishing document-handling costs, and delivering customer delight

The rapid transition to the digital-only world can help insurance companies to not just survive but thrive in the dynamic business environment.  Digital transformation would mean,

  • Enhanced connectivity with an omnichannel digital footprint
  • Faster onboarding, policy servicing, and claims processing
  • Improved collaboration with remote access to data and documents
  • Simplified and agile processes for faster response
  • Minimizing physical contact for ensuring safety
  • Superior customer experience

Preparing for a Digital-only Future

It is imperative for the modern insurer to harness the power of digital to manage their content, processes, and communication. Emerging technologies, including optical character recognition, intelligent character recognition, digital signatures, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and machine learning can help insurance companies in minimizing or even eliminating human intervention, thereby freeing up valuable resources, optimizing costs, improving speed, and making the processes more efficient and accurate. 

In short, digital is no more a matter of choice but a necessity for insurance companies to stay current, relevant, competitive, and cost-effective.

 

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