Business Process Automation for Insurance Administration

Automating busines processes are always a challege. It takes a lot in the technolgy adopted and the solution proposed. The case study is discussing one of the automation activity for an Individual Insurance company client.

The Underwriting department at the client site used a document-based workflow system that was technically outdated, unreliable and unsupported by the original vendor. The environment was isolated from the other legacy systems for administration, customer service and e-business. It required users to work in multiple, disconnected applications concurrently. Frustrated employees overcame flaws in the implementation by circumventing the automated workflow and used manual processes, including going back to paper-based procedures, printing out electronic documents and routing tasks to the different users by using paper stacks. Other departments like sales, marketing and customer service had no access to underwriting status information and were required to use cumbersome and time consuming manual processes in their activities.

As a result, underwriting procedures were labor intensive, inconsistent and costly. With limited and incomplete reporting tools, management was not able to effectively monitor capabilities. The lengthy turnaround time for underwriting and the lack of readily available information for consumers was identified as a significant competitive disadvantage.