It is truly a wonderous thing that terms that define technologies of an era take on the role of a force multiplier through generations that follow. The evolution of ‘automation’ as a term coined in the late 19th century has sprouted revolutionary disciplines in the 21st century, including robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI).
In the first blog of this series, we discussed the various challenges these technologies have solved for us in the past decade. We also touched upon how ‘hyperautomation’ offers a transformative path for the insurance industry, particularly—supporting insurers in quick and accurate claims processing or automating repetitive tasks to free up their time for value-added services such as fraud detection and customer service.
In this piece, I would like to dive a bit deeper into the concept of ‘hyperautomation’ and how it addresses inefficiencies in the insurance industry with some real-world case studies that offer keen learnings to create an intelligent automation ecosystem. Let’s dive in!
Hyperautomation is table-stakes!
As per Gartner, organizations will be able to reduce operational costs by 30%, leveraging hyperautomation by this year. Other reports also estimate that nearly 80% of organizations will have hyperautomation on their technology roadmaps by mid-this year. Furthermore, in today’s era, when tools like chatbots and AI have become commonplace to provide delightful customer experiences, Gartner is correct in stating that hyperautomation has moved it from being an option to a survival condition. But what does it look like in action?
CVS Health, a US healthcare company, has leveraged hyperautomation to simplify administrative processes and improve accuracy and customer service. According to Gartner, the company devised a new system using a combination of AI, RPA, and NLP (natural language processes) to automate receipt applications, payments, issue resolution, and more. This also improved the company’s ability to be more agile in introducing new products and programs, all while cutting admin time, errors, and costs.
Similarly, another case study shows how the IT department at Heathrow Airport was able to manage its low-code/no-code community practice and scale its own hyperautomations. They were able to thereby reduce the dependencies on IT during an already stressed and downsized pandemic situation. Gartner, in fact, has predicted that developers external to formal IT departments will comprise at least 80% of the low-code dev tools user base by 2026. But how will the insurance industry be able to leverage hyperautomation to create its efficiency engine? Let’s explore some possibilities.
Hyperautomation’s efficiency benefits in insurance
First given its name by Gartner, hyperautomation is basically the means to rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many business processes as possible. It is a business-driven discipline that helps best orchestrate the use of multiple technologies, tools, and platforms like machine learning (ML), AI, RPA, business process management (BPM), low code/no-code tools and more – to create an ‘intelligent automation ecosystem’. Of course, it brings several key benefits that give a myriad of efficiency advantages for the insurance industry, including:
- Automating end-to-end processes boosts agility, enabling swift adjustments to market or customer shifts, which is crucial in today’s dynamic business scene.
- Enhancing customer experience by streamlining processes ensures insurance firms deliver seamless service, which is vital in a competitive market where high service standards are expected.
- Driving operational efficiency by cutting errors and redundant tasks, leading to substantial cost savings, efficiency gains, and heightened productivity for insurance companies.
- Automating data collection and analysis facilitates better decision-making, empowering insurance firms to swiftly identify trends and patterns and thus enhancing underwriting and claims processing.
- Mitigating risk by supporting fraud detection, minimizing human error through process automation, reducing error costs, and ensuring regulatory compliance for insurance companies.
- Slashing costs by eliminating manual labor, resulting in significant savings and improved efficiency and productivity for insurance companies.
- Meet regulatory needs with ease, leveraging a mix of ML and predictive analytics to both course-correct and check performance as and when compliance changes take place.
It is important to note that any organization (insurance or otherwise) will benefit from a key trait of observability coupled with hyperautomation. While hyperautomation helps automate mundane tasks and frees up resources to focus on strategic objectives, observability helps offer real-time insights into the network performance and ensures any anomaly is detected and incidents are responded to proactively. According to EY’s Global Consumer Insurance survey, nearly 87% of policyholders agree that their claims experience directly impacts their decision to remain with the same insurance provider or make a change. Hyperautomation gives insurers the tools to boost efficiencies to serve their customers at the speed they need without sacrificing accuracy or quality. If we explore some common use cases for hyperautomation in claims, for instance:
- Automated satellite data analysis and drone imagery can help underwriters reduce the cost of damages caused by storms or natural disasters.
- Voice and biometrics analysis of and risk analysis of customers can be improved by matching the right claimants to claim handlers faster.
- RPA and contactless processing of low-risk claims can expand into a broader pool of losses or claims types or even the policyholder’s history to evaluate the claims risks
- Advanced telematics data, including video imagery, can help instantaneously capture the incident, trigger, and entry and process vehicle insurance claims faster.
The opportunities, suffice to say, are endless.
Unlocking the hyper-automation efficiency engine
Hyperautomation offers a transformative path towards streamlined processes, improved customer experiences, and cost savings. With the potential to automate end-to-end processes and harness AI, RPA, and machine learning, YASH Technologies has the expertise in the entire suite of technologies that coalesce to drive HyperAutomation solutions and valuable experience implementing these to empower insurance firms to make informed decisions, mitigate risks, and deliver seamless services to their customers.
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