Documents are the lifeblood of P&C insurance. Carriers, on average, receive anywhere from 2,600 to 4,000 documents per day, which they must process according to regulatory guidelines. According to IDC research[i], over half of the documents needing processing are digital files containing unstructured information — emails, attachments, SMS, PDF, PNG, etc.
Fortunately, newer technologies have paved the way for intelligent document processing (IDP) to handle the influx of unstructured information.
What is Intelligent Document Processing?
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to process documents in various formats. Unlike traditional Robotic Process Automation (RPA), IDP takes a different approach. It doesn’t depend on predefined rules or templates for document processing. Instead, it scans and interprets unstructured information in documents, mimicking human-like understanding and comprehension.
In this blog post, let’s unpack the top 8 ways IDP can transform insurance operations.
1. Data Collection, Classification, and Extraction
Insurance documents come in various forms: customer identity documents, third-party documents, claims, policy forms, customer notifications, invoices, compliance, and contracts. Not to mention the abundance of paperwork.
The manual processing of these documents consumes valuable time and financial resources for insurance carriers.
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) simplifies how carriers collect, classify, and extract data from all these sources:
- First, it scans, captures, and transfers all incoming documents, including paper documents, to a centralized document management solution (DMS).
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) classifies all these documents, while Optical Character Recognition (OCR) interprets various data elements such as names, addresses, policy numbers, etc.
- Advanced machine learning models provide context to a document’s different data fields, ensuring the information gets recorded accurately, even where data elements may appear in other locations or formats.
2. Policy Administration
IDP plays a crucial role throughout the life cycle of an insurance policy. It supports initial policy processing, manages endorsements or riders, performs audits to ensure accurate pricing based on potential exposure, and resolves customer queries effectively. Additionally, IDP automates premium reminders, data validation, and policy uploads, optimizing the policy issuance process.
3. Faster Claims Processing
The claims process involves many stages, including First Notice of Loss, document review, data extraction, assignation of adjustors, claim uploading, verification, and fund disbursement. IDP streamlines these steps, helping insurers process claims faster and create a better customer experience.
Here are all the ways the claims value chain benefits from IDP:
- Claims Data Processing: IDP effectively manages larger claim volumes by digitizing, reviewing, and auto-categorizing claims documents and hard copies.
- Claims Adjudication: This stage of claims involves a long list of checks usually performed by staff. Based on this checklist, the claim is either paid out or declined. Since this process is repeatable, it is perfect for automation, taking the pressure off your staff, improving turnaround time, and reducing errors.
- Claims First Notice of Loss (FNOL): FNOLs still get routed through call center agents. Repeat calls are often needed to collect more information or check the claim status. With IDP, customers can scan and upload documents directly, reducing errors.
- Claims Support: Why rely solely on call center agents to resolve customer queries? IDP auto-compiles data from multiple systems, flags errors, pre-assesses claims, and offers customer support in real-time during peak call times.
- Claims Validation: Capture all the data from the claims, validate, and fast-track the process with intelligent document processing.
4. Underwriting
Underwriting is another document-heavy process where underwriters extract and review thousands of documents before entering them into a downstream processing system. An intelligent system “reads” these documents like an underwriter, finds relevant data, and enters the appropriate data into the system, freeing up underwriters’ time for higher-value work—resulting in improved productivity and underwriting accuracy.
5. Invoice Processing
Automating invoice processing can save significant time and resources. IDP can extract, separate, and integrate data from invoices into accounting systems, eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors, leading to substantial time savings.
6. Customer Onboarding and Communication
Carriers can get their customers set up faster by using intelligent automation for ID verification, mobile document capture, and automated data entry. By allowing customers to communicate on their preferred channels, they can create a seamless customer experience.
7. Document Verification and Validation
IDP uses pre-built validation checks to ensure the accuracy of extracted data. It cross-verifies data with existing databases, performs data consistency checks, and flags errors for review. The best part: IDP systems can learn from user interactions and feedback. When human operators make corrections, the system adapts and improves its accuracy.
8. Third-Party Data Verification
IDP shines when it comes to third-party verification. Verifying information from third parties—such as courts and government agencies—is standard procedure in P&C insurance. IDP collects data from third-party websites and combines internal data with external data sources to score risk, simplifying the verification process and improving turnaround.
For carriers looking to optimize their operations, drive frictionless customer experiences, and drive competitive advantage, investing in IDP is crucial. By harnessing the power of next-generation technologies, carriers can not only improve efficiency but make data-driven decisions that lead to better risk management and greater profitability.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can automate document processing and stay competitive, contact us.