How to automate insurance workflows

Insurance companies deal with numerous processes, from claims management to underwriting and customer service. Manual process handling takes time and is prone to human error.

Insurance workflow automation optimizes these processes using specialized software to automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as claims processing, application review, policy administration and customer service.

This article explores what insurance workflow automation software is and how it works.

What is insurance workflow automation?

Insurance workflow automation refers to the use of workflow management software to automate and streamline various processes and tasks within the insurance industry across various insurance products.

The software enables insurance companies to define rules and conditions for each task, automatically assigning them to the appropriate individuals or teams. It also facilitates the integration of various systems, eliminating the need for manual data entry and enabling real-time information exchange.

Insurance process automation software can generate reports, send notifications and provide insights into the progress and status of ongoing processes.

For example, when someone submits a claim to a company, the automated workflow software automatically triggers a series of tasks, such as claim assessment, verification and approval. The software integrates with relevant systems, retrieves customer information and generates reports.

The goal is efficiency. With workflow automation software, organizations can deliver a superior customer experience.

What are common use cases for insurance workflow automation software?

According to research by McKinsey, 50% of all work can be automated. For insurance companies, some tasks companies can automate are:

1. Claims processing: Automating tasks such as insurance claim submission, assessment, verification and approval
2. Application processing: Streamlining the processing of insurance applications by automating tasks like application review, verification of applicant information, compliance checks and renewal notices
3. Customer service and new business acquisition: Automating customer data for policyholders across the customer journey, including insurance sales, follow-ups, policy updates, customer onboarding and other touchpoints
4. Underwriting: Optimizing the workflow for contract generation, amendment and adaptation based on individual customer profiles, medical history and insurance history
5. Policy administration: Automating back-office operations such as onboarding/offboarding processes, compliance and auditing, billing and maintaining customer databases for efficient policy administration
6. Quote processing: Streamlining the generation of insurance pricing quotes, scheduling health assessments, handling document management and electronic signatures
7. Compliance management: Automating regulatory compliance processes, such as Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures
8. Reporting and analytics: Automating the generation and distribution of reports, providing real-time visibility into key performance indicators, data analysis, decision-making support, data collection and data management
9. Document management: Digitizing and automating document handling, including document storage, retrieval, version control and collaboration

What is insurance workflow automation software?

In the era of swift digital transformation, 41% of consumers say they’re likely or more likely to switch insurance providers due to a lack of digital capabilities. So, if your company is still relying on legacy systems, here’s your sign to upgrade.

Insurance workflow automation helps insurance companies adapt to the digital world by automating repetitive tasks through automation software.

Redwood offers a range of automation software and services to automate business processes, enhance productivity and reduce manual workloads. Redwood’s automation solutions work for various industries, including finance, logistics and manufacturing.

How to automate insurance workflows with Redwood

Workflow management and automation software like Redwood seamlessly integrate with other systems, eliminating the need to jump from application to application.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Perform a process assessment

Identify the business processes within your insurance operations that are manual, repetitive and time-consuming, and evaluate their potential for automation.

Here are some steps to perform this assessment:

1. Make a list of all the key processes involved in your insurance operations, like claims processing, underwriting, policy administration, customer service, renewals and more.
2. Collect relevant data about each process, such as process duration, frequency, number of steps and resources involved. This will help you identify processes that are highly manual and time-consuming.
3. Engage with employees and stakeholders involved in each process to understand the pain points, inefficiencies and bottlenecks they encounter. Document their feedback and observations.
4. Assess the complexity of each process, considering factors like the number of decision points, dependencies on external data sources or systems and regulatory compliance requirements. Complex processes are often good candidates for automation.
5. Rank the identified processes based on their potential impact, feasibility and alignment with your business goals. Consider factors such as cost reduction, error reduction, customer experience improvement and time savings.
6. Create a comprehensive report summarizing the process assessment, including the identified processes, pain points, potential for automation and prioritization rationale.

Performing a process assessment sets the foundation for automating your insurance workflows.

Step 2: Design your workflow

With RunMyJobs by Redwood, you can design your workflow using its low-code automation technology.

Here’s how you can use its features to design your workflow:

1. RunMyJobs by Redwood provides a user-friendly, low-code, drag-and-drop workflow designer. You can easily create and customize workflows by selecting and arranging process steps, sequences, calendars and more.
2. You can also set up trigger execution automatically based on various events such as detected source files, data, events or messages from apps, systems, AI and more.
3. Redwood offers an extensive library of ready-to-use process automation templates, wizards and over 25 scripting languages and interfaces.

With Redwood, you can orchestrate processes and systems through context-aware logic. This means you can define rules and conditions within your workflows to automate exception handling and enable hands-free self-recovery.

Should any issues arise, the Redwood support team can help you set up your workflows.

Step 3: Integrate your existing workflows

Integrate the automation software with your existing apps and systems, such as CRM, claims management, databases, APIs or policy administration systems, to enable seamless data exchange and process automation across different platforms.

Step 4: Test your workflows

Thoroughly test the automated workflows and ensure that they function as expected, meet your business requirements and comply with industry regulations. Once tested and validated, deploy the automation solution into your production environment.

If any issues arise, RunMyJobs provides monitoring and analytics capabilities, as well as 24/7 support, to help you gain insights into process efficiency, identify bottlenecks and make data-driven decisions for further optimization.

Still not sure if Redwood can help automate repetitive tasks for your insurance company? Book a demo to find out more.

An example of insurance workflow automation success

Allianz and Redwood

Insurance provider Allianz, a global leader in the financial services industry, faced the challenge of reducing the effort and cost associated with their record-to-report (R2R) processes while improving data quality and eliminating trade processing delays.

By implementing Redwood Finance Automation, Allianz achieved significant results.

They:

• Reduced manual effort by 80%.
• Achieved an 11-month return on investment (ROI).
• Improved quality, consistency, turnaround times and transparency.

Redwood automated 90% of manual tasks, decreased the number of manual steps by 75% and cut the time and labor required to close by 65%. Employee satisfaction also improved as automation freed them to focus on higher-value activities. Read more about how Redwood helped Allianz achieve success.

Automate your workflow today

With the increasing digitalization of the insurance industry and evolving customer expectations, embracing workflow automation has become a necessity for staying competitive and driving growth.

Insurance workflow automation is a transformative solution that empowers insurance companies to optimize their operations, enhance efficiency and deliver superior customer experiences.

Learn more about how Redwood can help automate your business processes today.