By Xanthe Bennett, Head of Business Solutions at Expleo

Article drafted for Finance Digest

The insurance space is a large, complex machine where each cog helps to ensure the smooth running of its processes– so much so that if one cog is out of place, inefficiencies can be felt throughout the entire ecosystem. It’s well-known that the day-to-day running of an insurance company is filled with repetitive but nonetheless critical tasks, such as risk assessments, data analysis and preparing insurance policy terms. As such, insurance companies are relying on armies of workers to spend hours of their week tackling these important yet often unfulfilling duties. Today, these tasks represent 47% of employees’ time at work, suggesting significant room for improvement in business efficiency, as well as higher satisfaction for employees.

The Process Automation (PA) revolution has enabled businesses to free up employee hours from these time-consuming, low value tasks enabling them to focus on the more stimulating and human aspects of their job However, with 41% of employees globally feeling more concerned about automation processes now than a year ago, insurance companies need to ensure they bring their people along on their PA journey; showing them how they can work faster and smarter, and ultimately take more credit for their work.

Work smarter, not harder

As PA can accomplish repetitive tasks more quickly and accurately than humans, it can have a strong positive impact on businesses in the insurance industry if implemented correctly. Using automation in the workforce will result in a drastic drop in mundane tasks for employees and because of this, employees are able to spend more time on tasks that provide more value for the business – all while benefitting from algorithms doing the admin work.

And the results are clear. Businesses will see an increase in employee engagement and accountability as employees spend time delivering work at exceptional levels. Using PA, Expleo customers have been able to improve processes to generate more value. This shows that the combination of humans and technology not only benefits the company – it also allows human teams to take credit for strategic projects that will drive the business forward.

Increasing accuracy, efficiency, and employee engagement

For long term success, insurance providers must implement automation in their businesses to increase competitive advantage. To be able to compete, businesses must work on finding new and innovative ways to stay relevant and profitable and must use digital transformation to do so.

For insurance providers, automation is becoming a key differentiator for companies. Bringing in a team of consultants to implement Process Automation can help businesses to reap the benefits of technology, improving customer and employee satisfaction. This can be done by  educating staff on what Process Automation (PA) is, how it can add value to the business, and harnessing and developing skills within the team to help build excitement and a positive outlook towards the technology.

Using Process Automation, businesses can lay the foundations for long term scalable delivery, automate business-critical processes between departments such as the IT and security departments, and obtain and collate data from multiple sources. PA can also process customer records in reasonable timeframes, delivering cost and time savings. Additionally, admin tasks are significantly reduced, creating an efficient and more productive workforce. In a competitive landscape, these benefits can help to ease pressure for businesses and meet the growing demands of customers.

In 2020, Expleo worked with telco company Eir to enhance customer service, improve quality and reduce costs, implementing Process Automation (PA) to encourage engagement and efficiency. Through the PA processes, employees were able to hand over menial work to the machines, processing 50,000 orders through robots and saving 10,000 man-hours within online sales. This resulted in 165,000 financial items processed by PA in 2020 alone and a 60% reduction in the time taken to process orders – bringing it down to an average of 10 seconds in total.

Creating the digital workforce

The global pandemic highlighted a concerning digital skills gap across the world, an issue that may affect the transformation of the insurance sector. As the demand for new technologies is set to continue to grow, it is important for businesses to start embracing a digital-first approach and invest in developing a new pipeline of talent for the digital economy. Deploying a digital workforce may seem like a monumental task, but it will allow companies to grow in this competitive market.

According to IDC, by 2024, over 75% of organisations will implement some level of automation and with the insurance sector consumed by menial tasks, the benefits of Process Automation speak for themselves. By working with a technology partner to help utilise Process Automation within the business, organisations can build stronger teams and prepare for the industry of the future.