By the year 2025, about one-quarter of the insurance industry will have completed a digital transformation. And by the year 2030, automations will have saved insurance companies over $390 billion. How is your company moving along in the digital transformation process?
As insurance companies implement automation technologies to gain a competitive edge, you can’t afford to be left behind. Companies that have not moved to automated processes are managing multiple systems, manually moving data around, and generally experiencing a host of problems including data accuracy and high labor costs. These can be solved by integrating software and automating insurance process workflows.
There are Both Tangible and Intangible Benefits of Automation for Insurance Companies
Dollars speak volumes when it comes to proving the return on investment in technology. There are specific metrics that insurance companies often use to quantify their digital transformation results. When setting up your ROI goals, you also need to set a timeline for how long it should take to get there.
Insurance companies who have completed a digital transformation realize tangible benefits such as:
- Reduced labor costs for data entry and data checking.
- Improved accuracy of data entry into multiple systems reducing time required for rework.
- Reduced time to produce insurance quotes.
- Shorter time to onboard customers.
- Reduced number of fraudulent claims that make it to an adjuster.
- Compliance with regulatory requirements.
There are also some results that are harder to put a dollar value on, but are known to have a positive impact on the company. For example, improving customer satisfaction ratings is extremely important to insurance companies. That’s because customer reviews have a real impact on potential customers’ buying decisions. While there isn’t a dollar value for every 5 star review you get, you can potentially correlate a portion of sales to this activity. This will need to be an internal discussion on how you want to report on this because of its importance for future sales.
ROI for Insurance Process Automation Can Come in the Form of More Income or Less Spending
When planning out your ROI metrics for an insurance digital transformation, make sure you consider that some metrics will be increased dollars (in the form of new sales or returning customers), and some metrics will focus on more profitability as a result of a more efficiently run insurance company.
Insurance Process Automation that Increase Income
Creating an easy-to-use, on-demand quoting system for insurance policies keeps your potential customer engaged until the process is complete. The process required to make this work seamlessly will include automation. You can measure the rate of gaining new customers before and after your self-service customer onboarding process was built.
Commercial policies are traditionally difficult to quote. With tools like Microsoft Azure for Insurance and a self-service portal for customers to upload important documents, there are a lot of time efficiencies that can be realized. Those efficiencies turn into dollars when the underwriters are made more efficient and able to issue more policies in a shorter timeline.
Insurance Process Automation That Reduces Costs
One of the biggest budget items for insurance companies is labor cost. How many FTEs can you reduce if you implement RPA for insurance processes that automatically publishes data in all of the systems it needs to be in?
Chatbots available on the website make it easier for customers to interact with your company, finding answers to their questions without the need for a live customer service representative talking on the phone. By generating an online experience that addresses common questions, you’re able to divert your customer service team to those issues that truly require a personalized answer.
Planning the ROI for Your Insurance Company Digital Transformation
As you begin to plan for your digital transformation, you want to identify the most obvious processes that can be automated. Most companies focus on the processes currently costing the most money.
Before You Start Your Digital Transformation
Pull out the current data for the areas of focus so you know what you’re comparing to. This is your baseline. Depending on what you’re planning to automate you can look at metrics such as:
- Labor costs. It’s probably a good idea to show data for several months since there can be busy seasons for insurance companies.
- Customer satisfaction survey scores. If you don’t have one, get one going and then monitor it after each major adjustment to the customer experience.
- Time it takes to complete processes such as underwriting a policy or approving and paying a claim.
Set ROI Goals and Level-Set on Expectations
As with any investment, an ROI isn’t typically seen immediately. Set realistic goals on when you should start to see a return and why you chose that timeframe. If everyone on the team knows what to expect, it’s easier to keep morale high.
Make the Results Easily Accessible
Create dashboards that will allow you, your team, and management to see the progress of your digital transformation. What is the baseline and where are you now? When do you expect to reach an ROI? It’s possible to create these dashboards by pulling information from multiple internal systems.
Need Help Figuring Out Which Insurance Processes to Automate First?
If you’re interested in improving your insurance company’s bottom line by using process automation, you can book a free consultation call with Integratz. Our insurance automation experts will talk to you about the best place to start. And if you’ve already begun your insurance company digital transformation but need some help making sure you get to an ROI, we can assist with that too. Let’s talk!
Comments