Improve Insurance Customer Document Processing
Overview
Insurance companies today face a challenge against time, needing new contracts updated or changed ASAP. This can be a diligent time consuming task that risks irritating a customer if not done efficiently.
In this use case, we explore how with a modern technology platform like DocProStar, you can significantly speed up the sale of new policies—and the administration of existing ones, automating processing, reducing risk and at the same time improving customer engagement. Receive applications, analyze their information, and turn around sales quotes in a fraction of the time. Never lose supporting documents with automated archiving. Bring new insurance products to market more quickly than you ever have. Impress your prospects and turn them into happy customers right from the start.
THE SCENARIO
Customers value speedy and hassle-free service, something that seems contradictory to what the actual process looks like when buying a new insurance policy. To get from a customer’s initial inquiry to the finalizing of a sale, companies need to improve processes for getting from A to B. For each type of insurance, there are different forms and document requirements to onboard new customers, and so there are also different processes.
When insurance companies are dealing with hundreds of thousands of these processes a day, they need to do it in a hassle free environment that’s sure to take care of the customer. This can be a struggle as insurers are often trying to cobble together a variety of systems and communicate among those without access to some or all of them.
Creating a new policy is a complicated process
Any one provider may offer many types of insurance, from auto to life to homeowners and more. Each of these business lines has different sets of forms and asks for different supporting documents from customers. These documents will come from a variety of sources. Homeowner’s insurance, for example, requires documents from not only the customer, but also a bank, home inspector, and appraiser, among others. The information from all these documents, located anywhere on the document and potentially across multiple pages, needs to make it into backend systems and get attached to the right customer record. Additionally, there is a staggering volume and variety of content to process. To process the incoming documents of an insurance company is to speak the jargon of several different professions all at once.
Document and data verification is difficult but crucial
What happens when a document is missing some information, or it's filled in illegibly? If a customer missed a page they needed to sign, for example, someone will need to follow up to get that signature. With legacy systems relying on rules-based processing, these errors often aren’t caught until too late. If that follow up takes too long to happen, it’s a frustrating delay that turns customers off. The same is true when information on a new form doesn’t match with records a company might already have. Correcting erroneous or missing information may slow the process down and upset customers, but not catching these errors can put insurance companies in a tricky spot. Premiums and claim settlements based on bad information increase the risk of an insurer having to pay settlements they otherwise might not have.
Protecting sensitive information can be a challenge
Many of the documents that customers provide can contain sensitive information, and not every person who can access customer records needs to see everything contained in them. Additionally, depending on the kind of insurance policy being sold, there may be compliance regulations that dictate archiving requirements for certain documents. Additionally, identifying document types and determining what information is hidden, and from whom, are tasks which are most often—slowly and at high risk to data exposure—performed by people. This sensitive information, once received and captured, requires continued oversight due to General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR. Providers need to know exactly what data was received from whom, and on what date it entered the organization and reviewed, to ensure retention policies and GDPR compliance are met and auditable.
Meeting compliance regulations is costly and inefficient
Meeting compliance regulations comes at a high price and is ultimately time consuming. However, in today’s regulated environments it is mandatory to have complete visibility of all content and data relating to customers throughout the complete lifecycle of the customer engagement. This process protects both the customer and the insurance company, and it means correctly cataloging all content including assignment to the relevant customer(s) and proper classification of information. This ensures the correct retention scheduling and privacy rules are applied, whether by software or human intervention. Performed manually, this requires a large staff and is prone to error, which could lead to issues in any subsequent risk and governance audits. For banks and financial institutions, meeting compliance regulations is an important process yet ripe for error.
To manage these complexities quickly and accurately is critical for winning new business and keeping what you already have. But insurance companies face a number of challenges in automating their established processes.
THE SOLUTION
TCG’s DocProStar goes beyond the rules-based (or robotic) automation of legacy systems and takes document processing many steps further in capabilities and compliance. The modern AI engine that’s at the heart of this solution can recognize and act on the many variables of supporting documents as they are received. DocProStar functions in a transmission- and format-agnostic manner, meaning customers and agents alike won’t be hamstrung by strict submission rules or formats. Customers can send in supporting documents however it works for them and can be assured that the information will make it to an agent with both speed and accuracy. Insurers can rest assured that compliance is built-in.