How to avoid ‘intellectual waste’ by exploiting automation

Infrastructure is the key to leveraging automation in underwriting, says Ed Challis of Re:infer, ahead of a webinar in Intelligent Insurer’s underwriting webinar series.

Delivering quick response times is now vital for any high-growth business. But most underwriters don’t have the infrastructure to automate unstructured communications at scale—especially when it comes to the broker relationship.

In fact, according to a recent case study by Hiscox, 97 percent of broker requests are incorrectly routed. Leverage automation in underwriting and you’ll maximise the likelihood of a timely response, saving both time and money.

On November 24, Ed Challis, chief executive founder of communications intelligence platform Re:infer, will lead a discussion on the ways in which automation is reducing manual workload for underwriters, streamlining operations, and elevating the broker experience.

Panellists in the webinar, titled Leverage Automation in Underwriting to Reduce Costs & Speed-Up Response Times, will include Tim Yorke, chief operating officer at AXA Commercial, Bradley O’Connor, head of operations technology platforms at Beazley, Michael Zimmer, head of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Zurich Group Germany, and Claudio Morando, head portfolio analytics & strategy EMEA at Swiss Re.

Here, Ed Challis outlines what attendees can expect from the session.

What topics do you aim to cover in this webinar?

We’ll discuss the operational challenges facing insurers today and how the panel is thinking about these challenges. To my mind, insurance is a business built on expertise and judgement; it's not a simple product or service. We will discuss how insurers can improve the efficiency and customer experience of their business while retaining that expertise and judgement. We’ll address the biggest sources of inefficiency and friction and explore the idea of “intellectual waste” - that your best, most experienced colleagues might be wasting time on low value tasks. Crucially, we’ll discuss how we can change that equation.

The panel will share their thinking about improving and developing the client relationship. As it's late 2020 and it's been a tough year, we'll also be talking about what the panel's goals are for next year, in the medium term, and speculatively about the longer term. We’ll discuss how the panel see the market evolving and what they think this market will be like in 20 years and, ultimately, where it is going.

We’ll discuss the role of automation and digital transformation more broadly, and we’ll explore how the panel and their businesses are framing and approaching this. Technology and its capabilities are rapidly evolving. I want to find out how the panel and their businesses think about adopting new technology, and how they foster a culture of change in their organisations. We’ll look at examples of success in their organisations and examples where adoption has not been so great and why that might be. We’ll also discuss the business drivers for change: is change an imperative? How is change being sponsored, measured and resourced?

Why did you choose these topics – why are they important today?

To me it's all about the gap between what's possible given technological advancements and changes in expectation and how we actually work today - the legacy of our operating models.

This gap between what's possible and what's currently done poses a set of interesting challenges and questions to insurers: what are our priorities? Resources are always constrained so we need to choose what we're going to focus on. How do we measure ourselves in meeting those priorities? How do we actually change our organisations - culture, operating models, incentives? And what technologies used in what we can help us deliver on those business objectives?

What opportunities does the insurance industry face in relation to automation?

At the heart of the insurance industry - the engine for growth - are expertise, domain knowledge and human judgement. That's an inherently human centric organisation and operating model. But beyond the necessary human judgement there's a huge amount of “intellectual waste” caused by antiquated operating models and processes - for example paper processes, manual workflows, inefficient process design.

Technologies like OCR, NLP, RPA, AI have the potential to completely change the unit economics of the insurance industry. We’ll discuss how insurers taking on this opportunity.

Please tell us a bit about Re:infer’s offering for the insurance industry

Re:infer is an intelligent communications processing platform. It’s an advanced AI platform that automates the interpretation of communications data – for example, emails, tickets, forms, chats and calls.

Many of the processes in insurance are facilitated via electronic communications channels like email and calls. With Re:Infer our clients get real-time quantified visibility and insights into these critical business activities and can automate the low-value transactional requests in their organisations. This means customers and brokers get a much faster, more responsive accurate experience and the insurer can remove cost and eliminate intellectual waste from their organisation.

What benefits does this bring?

Efficiency, cost savings, visibility and better customer experiences. Typically, we see five times payback in year one just from the automation of communications.

What do you hope people will take away from this webinar?

I hope this will be a great conversation between practitioners sharing insights and hard-earned wisdom on the priorities, opportunities and challenges of digitally transforming this great industry.

Enrol here for Leverage Automation in Underwriting to Reduce Costs & Speed-Up Response Times.