Insurance Blog | Accenture

It’s easy to feel like insurance is already divided into digital leaders and digital laggards. But my previous post presents some very interesting findings from Accenture Research that undercuts this view. Since the pandemic, a surprising number of businesses have turned into “Leapfroggers” and made huge leaps forward in their IT strategies and revenue growth.

We looked at a few high-level ways insurers can unleash their inner leapfrogs in that post. Today I’m going to zoom in on catalyzing digital change and revenue growth in claims.

Unleashing digital change in claims

The biggest tech challenges in claims right now are fairly widely recognized. They include building agile platforms, minimizing manual and bespoke processes, unlocking data trapped in paper and other unstructured formats, and retaining and growing talent.

Overcoming any of them is no small achievement. The good news is that the tools at the disposal of carriers are more powerful than ever. We believe four in particular stand our as smart investments in the world of claims:

  1. Cloud
  2. AI and machine learning
  3. Workflow
  4. Automation

What does applying these look like in practice?

It looks like AI-powered document ingestion tools extracting relevant data from the millions of documents claims organizations receive and surfacing insights that lead to smarter decisions or support straight-through processing.

It looks like AI removing manual task management and freeing up humans to focus on higher-value work.

It looks like digital portals that allow for efficient self-service and put transparency in the hands of the customer.

It looks like tools that make workflows more efficient and move past the limitations of legacy platforms.

And it looks like using the cloud to build, scale and connect these technologies more quickly than ever.

Four key results for investing in claims tech

These technologies can not only address some of the most important challenges in claims today, they can also deliver these key results:

  • Higher efficiency, as only those claims that need a human touch or complex decisioning to resolve take up workforce bandwidth
  • Scalable, pinpoint accuracy, as decisions are supported with real-time intelligence
  • Comprehensive ecosystem oversight that makes interaction with key partners more fluid, simple and results-driven
  • Boosted workforce engagement and skill growth

Combined, these drive revenue growth by delivering empowerment through transparency, faster resolution, a personal touch for customers when needed, reduced loss adjustment expenses, and lower premium potential.

Getting started

Another major challenge facing carriers looking to bring digital tech deeper into their claims processes is the simple question of where to get started. The potential and the stake are both so high that it’s hard to know.

We suggest:

  • Thinking cloud-first, which can get you to your desired tech capability and maturity faster than you think
  • Shining a light on dark data with document intelligence applications
  • Leveraging digital decision-making tools to support both machine- and human-based transactions and boost quality control.

In my next post, we’ll look at becoming a leapfrogger in the actuarial world.


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Disclaimer: This content is provided for general information purposes and is not intended to be used in place of consultation with our professional advisors.