How Insurance Companies Are Putting RPA to Work

Last year, Dublin-based professional services company Accenture released a whitepaper detailing where the insurance industry’s existing robotic process automation (RPA) efforts are paying off. Seeking areas where RPA can provide efficiency solutions, insurance companies are finding a good fit in business units throughout their organizations. And within each of these, bots tackle a bevy of tasks.

In the sales and distribution department, for example, bots create sales scorecards that go out to agents. Underwriting and pricing unit bots generate renewal premiums after gathering information from various systems. RPA is streamlining the bogged-down claims administration process by processing certain bulk payments and automating manual claims handling and notifications to loss adjustors.

And they’re not focused on just industry-specific processes. Administration and finance and accounts departments throughout the insurance realm have benefitted from RPA streamlining.
The overall emphasis of the report, “A Holistic Approach to Insurance Automation,” implies that the insurers getting the most out of RPA, however, have moved beyond simply weeding out intensive, repetitive tasks that they sic a bot on.

These companies drive automation “through a managed, top-down approach,” according to Accenture. By looking beyond the walls of the specific business unit in which the bot is employed, they take a strategic view to a RPA implementation, examining “program governance, roles, sponsorship, and alignment with the business and IT change framework.”

The following breakdown offers an overview of the various ways in which Accenture sees insurers successfully deploying RPA in their operations.

Insurer RPA Applications

Sales and Distribution

create sales scorecards to push notifications to agents
conduct compliance, legal and credit checks
paper or online account maintenance

Underwriting and Pricing

data entry for clearance and registration process
update systems and produce client information
gather information from various systems and generate renewal premiums

Policy Administration and Servicing

automate updates to personal and back account details
reject or cancel policy with no payment in 21 days
identify policy premium discrepancies and reconcile them

Claims

process claims bulk payments, pre-approved for an expense amount
automate manual assignments to claims handlers and input first notice of loss submissions to
various systems
automate notifications to loss adjustors

Finance and Accounts