In the current context of their digital transformation, insurance companies are faced with the possibility and need to accelerate and increase the efficiency of their internal business processes, with particular emphasis on the claims management process.
One of the features to be considered is the use of RPA – Robotic Process Automation tools. With these tools, software robots can perform tasks that, although are essential to the processes, are repetitive and do not require creativity, allowing human employees the time to perform more creative and value-added tasks. RPA tools allow the creation of software robots “emulating” the actions of human users in the interface of the various IT systems of the organization which support the business processes operation.
A significant part of the claims management process is supported by documents, from which the information being handled by a software robot must be extracted.
Information is extracted from the documents using scanning software and OCR, but often the results fall short from the desired , with high error rates requiring human intervention to be corrected and validated.
These modest results in the “capture” phase are one of the main problems / barriers in the automation of document-based processes using RPA, and there is a need to explore ways to overcome these barriers.
The combination of OCR capabilities and the ability to interact with internal or external systems allows a software robot to perform multiple interactions to determine with greater accuracy the information read by OCR.
For example, the information collected from a claim can be validated against the system containing the active policies and validated using public external databases or service providers of the insurer.
With the information validated from multiple sources, it is possible to program the robot to perform the most time-consuming operations, such as opening the claims process, requesting an expert opinion, and filling a list of items for potential fraud assessment.
The claims management process of an insurer can be optimized using RPA, with higher gains when combining OCR ability to collect information from process documents and integration with external systems.
With robots accessing external systems there is no need for system integration, which may not be available and may be expensive.
While insurers undergo the digital transformation process , with numerous ongoing initiatives (new partners, replacement of systems, etc.), using RPA will play a relevant role for allowing greater flexibility in adapting to these initiatives.
