Reduced cost of operations in policy administration
Automated processing of standard policy administration requests to
reduce costs and enhance quality of experience for end customers
Process
The client’s offshore center in India manages backend transactions for insurance policy administration of closed block products. The requests from customers are received through the call center or mail or letters. These are then processed by the back office and are categorized as financial and non-financial transactions. The different types of requests in these were more than 100. Non-Financial transactions can be simple requests like change of address, phone number, nomination details, etc. Whereas, Financial transactions examples were requests related to the portfolio and management of the funds placed in the block, new investment areas, partial or full withdrawal requests, etc. Each of these transactions had its own flow of work and Turnaround Time (TAT) to be followed. Resources managing the process had training time of more than 6 months before they became proficient in handling all categories hence dependency on skilled manpower was very high.
Solution
Automation of the process was a challenging task primarily due to the large number of categories and each had different flow to be followed. There was a volume analysis done for the process on which categories were the most common requests. The analysis showed that there were 10 request types which resulted in 75% of the volume inflow. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was then looked at as a solution to automate these 10 categories of transactions. The bot would analyze the request and if the request was in these 10 categories then it would complete the transaction and send to a processor for validation. In case of other categories, the bot would directly route the transaction to a processor for completion.
Challenges Addressed
Multiple systems for different insurance products
The client did not have single standard product for policy administration; making it a challenge to train new resources to process requests.
Seasonal and daily volume fluctuations
Requests were initiated by the customer and had a lot dependency on external factors like stock market situation, fund performance etc. Hence, it was observed that certain events triggered high volumes.
Handoffs in the process increased error chances
Handoffs in some transactions were required due to either levels of approval or cross functional team approvals.
Stringent quality checks required large QA team
Financial transactions were directly processed in the system and hence required stringent quality checks to avoid manual error to creep in.
Outcome
- Cost savings of $0.5 million per annum on policy admin operations.
- TAT met percentage improved by 8%.