Today we were joined by Luiza Gusmão, VP customer at Cover Genius, Ernie Bray, CEO of AutoClaims Direct, and Jeff Ryan, director of claims design and delivery at Allstate to discuss the trends driving more efficient automated claims.
We discussed the technologies behind more sophisticated automated claims, like artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing (NLP), and the impacts that new approaches have on customers and insurers alike.
Here’s what we learnt:
Don’t disregard what you hear on customer calls. Jeff Ryan says that customer call data is some of the most useful claims data available. With sophisticated analysis methods available to insurers, such as NLP, this can become business-critical unstructured data. If insurers can harness this data, they can understand vital trends in customer behaviour and build these insights into automated claims processes.
62% of our audience would say that their customers are happy with the current claims process, while 38% say that improvements are needed to the process.
But get customers off the phone. When a customer picks up the phone, it means that digital customer service avenues have failed – the customer doesn’t feel heard, and they don’t trust the platform in front of them. Insurers need to establish digital trust long before the point of claims. To secure customer trust, insurers need to build truly flexible customer service into their claims process.
Don’t just automate claims, integrate them. Luiza Gusmão points to the emergence of fully integrated claims platforms as a revolutionary shift. When insurance products are embedded into other platforms, AI and NLP can be integrated across all parts of the process. Fraud detection and prevention benefits significantly, as the Cover Genius XClaim platform can create risk scores for customers and smart routes to fraud specialists. Well-integrated systems can direct human decision-makers to spend time on the right problems.
32% have seen their firm implement techniques such as AI, machine learning, and natural language processing into their claims process.
Automation at its best is about making jobs easier, not replacing them. Ernie Bray mentions an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ where a company slowly automates away all of its employees, ultimately even taking the CEO. The episode recognises the pointlessness of excessive automation. Instead, insurance professionals from adjusters to claims and fraud teams can benefit massively from balance – insurers should embrace automation to optimise their individual performance.
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Matt Kenyon is a content producer at Insurtech Insights.
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