economic and technological challenges for the insurance industry.
The digital revolution has swept up
trends, companies and, ultimately, societies entirely. Consumers have changed and diversified their needs. Recent worldwide political and social changes have also weighed in, being connected to low interest rates cropping up and fluctuating regulatory transformations. All these things pose certain risks for companies and can potentially modify the industry’s overall structure.
Insurers must adapt to and adopt
new technologies such as RPA, to stay relevant and remain compliant with both national and international regulations, while delivering more consumer-centric services. Large companies in the industry have THE CURRENT STATE OF INSURANCE already begun their digital AND TECHNOLOGY transformation journeys by implementing automation solutions Insurance is an industry difficult to and by trying out new data and revolutionize, and this is probably due analytics capabilities. The enthusiasm to the fact that it handles people’s is palpable, and those who are more valuable assets: their lives, already implementing realize that health, properties; essentially, their projects such as these require a full security. Nevertheless, the industry’s organizational transformation, careful stability depends on global planning, and clear objectives. socioeconomic and regulatory contexts. This paper will explain what benefits Robotic Process Automation (RPA) The United States have elected a new brings to the Insurance industry, how President and the European Union has it tackles the most sensitive pain been confronted with a rise of points, and offers guidelines on Euroscepticism, which culminated building a successful RPA capability. with the UK citizens voting to exit the EU. Similarly, radical political views Real uses cases will illustrate how have gained increasing support both other companies developed their RPA within European nations and in the EU deployments. Parliament. These inevitably affect sectors such as health insurance, You will also find out what’s in store which is currently facing significant for intelligent automation, as AI and regulatory changes. cognitive tools merge with RPA. Finally, the paper will demonstrate On the technological side, the rise of that insurers must catch the RPA train mobile technologies (IoT devices, before it is too late if they want to stay smartphones, apps, digital relevant in an ever so challenging and wearables) generates a need for new rapidly evolving market. insurance business models and services, especially in health and As Dianne Phalon, UiPath US Sales VP, property & casualty insurance. describes it: Therefore, aligning with new regulations, offering custom, up-to- “With demands to increase date services, while also remaining efficiencies and improve competitive are some of the main challenges insurers face today. margins, insurance companies are recognizing significant Other important trends affecting competitive pressures on Insurance concern: numerous fronts. Deploying a ▪ consolidating the new mergers robot for front-end tasks to and acquisitions between various deliver a better customer insurers; ▪ priority is given to international experience is forcing all regulators over regulation from insurance companies to follow national or regional organizations; the path of early adopters in RPA just to keep pace.” Insurance in the age of intelligent automation - 2 ▪ the rise of InsureTech early adopters to the mainstream. At partnerships, i.e. companies that that point, robotic process deliver services and products only automation will become ubiquitous. for specific fields of the industry; The time spent on gathering and this lead to customers using processing data amounts to different providers and getting approximately 50% of the overall full- informed via insurance time equivalents (FTEs). aggregators; According to a 2017 McKinsey Global With all these new directions Institute report, insurance and finance occurring in the industry, insurance have a 43% automation potential, companies need to take advantage particularly in process data, interface of the growth opportunities, while also and expertise. RPA can mimic preventing and managing inherent repetitive administrative tasks and risks. They have already started to works perfectly for functions such as upgrade their technical capabilities application handling, claims with automation tools, such as RPA processing or data entry, freeing up and cognitive and Artificial between 20 to 30% of capacity at the Intelligence (AI) applications. company level. With the advent of cognitive and AI tools - such as These technologies have allowed machine learning, chatbots, computer companies in the insurance sector to vision or OCR - automating more increase efficiency, eliminate errors complex processes is possible, for and reduce cost. And if there are still example using image classification some players that have not even for claims processing or employing tested RPA, they are definitely machine learning for analyzing text considering it, as this technology is when servicing customer queries. becoming a staple in an advancing industry. Key aspects for insurers are creating high-growing businesses, reducing RPA’S KEY ADVANTAGES FOR INSURERS costs and, at the same time, managing inherent risks. In order to Robotic process automation (RPA) is employ RPA successfully, companies a new, but fast-growing technology need to be clear about their that employs software bots to take objectives, identify the suitable over repetitive, tedious rules-based repetitive, manually-intensive and business tasks. rules-based processes for automation, and ensure automation For many people in the work field is accepted throughout the entire today, administration processes are organization. diminishing productivity and carving out from the time spent on strategic RPA has been deployed successfully tasks. Organizations utilize RPA to take in handling transactional, care of a wide range of tasks – from administrative insurance processes, simple document workflows to such as basic investigation, complex business processes. Gartner applications handling, claims analysts estimate that RPA’s adoption processing, data entry or notice of will reach 41% by 2020. As with any loss. new technology, RPA will move from Insurance in the age of intelligent automation - 3 These processes can be attended or Dianne Phalon observes that: unattended, that is: processes requiring human supervision and “insurance companies are interaction or processes that run in already very eager to adopt the background in batch mode, automation because of the without human input. An RPA solution must handle both types of processes legacy systems, because of their with ease, while also being intuitive, annual financial and easy to implement, scalable, compliance goals. And the main compliant and secure. benefits they obtain from RPA, besides lowering their costs, are Robotic Process Automation has a compliance and scalability.” proven track record in reducing manual intervention, duplication and INSURANCE PAIN POINTS AND error, as well as speeding up OPPORTUNITIES processing time and throughput and increasing capacity. Insurers face a constant challenge: how can they build high-growing RPA can successfully and significantly businesses while also optimizing reduce the time insurance agents costs? The key is to understand which spend on collecting customer data, tasks are most prone to manual, as well as lower the underwriting rules-based repetitive effort and efforts devoted to checking records assess the proper way to undertake accuracy. the automation journey. In insurance management, RPA is Insurers typically deal with mixed able to enhance compliance and data formats, including a variety of audit trails if the required conditions paper files and electronic documents are embedded into automation The manual effort is considerable, as decision rules. well as time-consuming, costly and error-prone. Security is another top concern of insurance companies anywhere in the Insurance companies also use a world. Given the increased risks posed complex IT environment, with many by the rise of cyber attacks and third party legacy applications, digital failures, RPA reduces the systems, and software to manage liabilities from business processes or their business functions. When adding data handling within organizations a new software solution, integration themselves. needs to be swift, easy and painless. Otherwise, these companies are left In extremely hazardous situations, in with outdated applications that no which entire company databases longer provide the support needed for could be lost, RPA ensures that organizational growth and processes can be switched between development. servers and offers the possibility of reverting to previous features if the Regulatory changes in tax laws, PCI current system does not offer the standards, HIPAA privacy rules, etc. desired results.
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(on national, regional or international or establish advanced operational levels) occur often, and business capabilities. processes suffer or need to be re- established in order to reflect these THE UIPATH SOLUTION changes. Compliance difficulties and non-compliance by insurance At UiPath, RPA is a journey towards a companies can result in a range of high and sustainable return of damaging financial and operational investment. Insurance companies consequences. must understand that RPA will become the norm in almost all Scalability is another pain point that industries and that planning ahead is scales into play whenever there are of fundamental importance. To create seasonal peaks and lows, and being a solid foundation, companies must able to handle a high volume of work consider more than one technology, is essential. integrate siloed operation, application and data, adapting and scaling. These are areas where RPA can bring Therefore, a tripartite relationship a positive, measurable impact. between software vendor, customer Automation opportunities, as defined and implementation partner allows in an Accenture study, reside in areas enterprises to dramatically reduce where significant human effort and their time to value. resources are employed: in sales & distribution, underwriting and pricing RPA is easy to understand and pilot, and claims processing. In sales and but is not easy to implement at scale. distribution, software robots can Insurers have two options: that of perform sales scorecards for notifying implementing it with vendor agents, compliance checks, maintain assistance or they can choose from customer accounts from paper or the UiPath network of partners and online forms. create an in-house RPA capability. This is the RPA Center of Excellence. It Underwriting and pricing processes brings all the resources, the expertise can also be handled by robots for and the politics of adoption in one data entry, updating systems, place, with clear roles established for gathering information from different the core RPA team and governance systems, updating personal details, models in place. UiPath offers a rejecting or canceling policies if the complete training program for payment was not done in due time, customers that covers all the major identifying policy errors and roles for the CoE team, from RPA performing reconciliation. For claims, developers to business analysts. RPA can easily automate notifications, recurrent back reconciliation, First, businesses need to identify the transactions and more. right processes that are suited for automation and the departments in RPA also significantly improves which human employees are customer relations, helping insurers performing time-consuming and deliver more customized offering, redundant work. develop better interactions, generate better insights through data analytics
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At the same time, it is important to sentiment analysis with the help of keep in mind that the RPA journey integrated ABBYY cognitive and OCR relies on the close collaboration services. between the Business and the IT sides of a company. Choosing the right Claims processes are where RPA can team to be in charge of implementing make a clear difference. UiPath robots RPA within the enterprise is also employing OCR are able to “read” crucial. This team of experts is hand filled forms, recognize the responsible for aligning the information, extract what is necessary, automation project with the match it, perform validation and company’s strategic direction, making revalidation in insurers’ databases. sure that the project is accepted This is a machine learning tool, that within the organization, and setting a allows robots to classify data per budget for implementing RPA. keywords, types and any other type of pre-determined labeling. Ultimately, there are four main steps any organization has to go through Security will continue to be a on this journey: sensitive subject, but the UiPath ▪ the proof of concept that proves if Platform, with its Orchestrator, Studio, RPA can be successful or not, and Robot, can handle it successfully. determines the implementation The robots can automate under model and what partners are better locked screen for complete privacy, suited for the project; with role-based access to authorized ▪ the pilot in which an automated users. With integrated powerful data process runs into production for the analytics capabilities offered through first time; Kibana and Elasticsearch, every ▪ the ramp up, which sets best action any robot performs, every user practices, identifies more decision and change is tracked in real opportunities for automation and time and logged centrally on the grows the team of experts; server to provide full visibility into ▪ RPA institutionalization within the process execution and operational entire company, the stage where statistics. RPA is embedded at scale in the organization and functions The platform is equipped with full sustainably. audit logs, delivering analytics of any type of anomaly in robots and human The UiPath Enterprise Platform stands employees equally, to ensure out from other providers’ solutions processes are fully compliant. For through a range of performance example, in the HR departments of drivers. For capability, the Platform insurance companies, robots can be enables automation of a large variety set up to monitor users and perform of processes across any environment. ad-hoc surveys that determine if UiPath is a truly agnostic system that procedures have been thoroughly works with any technology, from SAP followed. The robots then create to Citrix and anything in between. It reports and analysis for company delivers intelligent automation executives, which allow them to take through language detection, appropriate measures for a better extraction of unstructured data, and employee compliance.
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UiPath is invested in providing that there will always be a global pool velocity for a fast ROI. RPA is of developers and business users implemented faster due to the offering support and resources. Studio’s intuitive design tool built on Microsoft Workflow Foundation, UIPATH RPA BOOSTS THE INSURANCE making it easy to use for both INDUSTRY experienced developers and business analysts with little to none coding Insurance customers successfully use abilities. The UiPath Robot gets more UiPath robots to automate tedious, work done faster and reliably, time-consuming processes and handling unattended and attended manage to streamline their tasks. Furthermore, with the training operations. Here’s how. programs and support delivered, UiPath stands alongside customers Underwriting and new business for the whole way, helping build Centers of Excellence and a self- Challenge sustained, scalable RPA expertise to run and maintain automation. A large Swiss global reinsurance company needed to ensure precise The UiPath Solution delivers comparison of account records and scalability for a higher performance. was looking to improve the process UiPath Orchestrator is powered by a rate involved in the financial multi-tenancy feature that allows reconciliation of the monthly bank creating a number of tenants and statements from all clients; it was isolating all their data using a single done manually and was error prone. Orchestrator instance. Different departments of the same Solution organization are provided with separate and secure spaces without The UiPath Robot automatically adding more infrastructure, with data performed data extraction from stored securely and independently clients’ bank statements and per tenant. A single user may run compared with the accounting multiple robot runtimes in parallel, in system, ensuring the balances were the same virtual machine, allowing for accurate and matching. The real-time collaboration and complete information was then updated in the reuse and redistribution of system. The process had 100% automation resources. Rollback is accuracy, improved speed, achieved easy in cases of recovery scenarios. 80% turnaround time reduction, and ¼ of human effort was saved through UiPath is a firm believer in a automation. democratized RPA and provides online training and accreditation Claims management through the Academy, a free Community Edition of the Studio and Challenge the Robot, and maintains an active community of UiPath users. This A service provider for the Claims unit ensures continuity for businesses that of a large healthcare insurer have deployed the UiPath solution because it gives them the certainty Insurance in the age of intelligent automation - 7 performed claims management Vendor payments by property validation through a manual, time- insurers were also automated consuming, error-prone process. The delivering a productivity improved by company needed to overcome the 70%, reduced processing times and high-defect rates, backlogs and high converted service levels to 24/7 turnaround time involved in the operations. process. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Solution Despite the fact that RPA has only Seven UiPath robots were designed started to gain adopters, thinking and bundled to support the claims ahead is at the top of everyone’s value chain, automating 35-40% of concerns, both solutions vendors, the process. Productivity increased by partners, and insurers. Though many 68%, accuracy levels were enhanced are already invested in advanced by 95% and the overall compliance cognitive and AI tools, they must be with regulatory requirements was integrated alongside the RPA improved. solutions previously chosen for maximum efficiency. The UiPath Non-recommended hire adjudication Platform is at a point in which it has integrated cognitive services from Challenge Google, Microsoft, IBM Watson and ABBYY to keep up with the AI The Claims' unit of a large auto developments already occurring. insurer dealt with a process consisting of operating in an offshore This is intelligent automation, environment, which required Citrix delivering: language detection, the based automation. The purpose was extraction of unstructured data, and to evaluate whether the claims should sentiment analysis. be extended, taken off hire or closed, and identify whether there are any Our robots analyze language potential customer complaints. meaning, intent, and emotion and use it for complex decision-making. Think Solution about handling irregular paper invoices or interpreting content and The process was auto-triggered when applying rules, as in the case of the claim approached the deadline. unhappy social media posts. The validation was undertaken using the claim application, the invoices of UiPath evolves as a modular platform rental companies & the hire allocation that is flexible enough to integrate spreadsheets. The robots brought multiple AI capabilities. The next over 65% improvement in average releases will bring the Platform a step handling time, 50% improvement in closer to achieving full Intelligent productivity, standardizing and Process Automation with self-learning replicating the process across 44 exception handling and self- global claims centers in the client’s generating RPAs through passive organization. learning.
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Our vision is that of enabling customers to deliver high value solutions for a wide range of sectors. We do that by building the smartest and most powerful digital workforce that can: ▪ self-learn in real time; ▪ make decisions based on unstructured data; ▪ identify new automation opportunities on its own; ▪ Collaborate with humans intuitively through voice command. And we are only just beginning.
UiPath August 2017
www.uipath.com info@uipath.com
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