THE VALUE OF ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION IN INSURANCE

Robotic process automation (RPA) frees up time for human insurance agents to focus on what they’re good at, improving the customer experience

WRITTEN BY: ALEX CLERE

Insurance businesses are using robotic process automation (RPA) to significantly streamline their systems and remove manual effort from simple but laborious tasks –particularly rules-based tasks, where a robot can be taught to execute and repeat certain actions. Though it’s a trend that started before the COVID19 pandemic, the pressures caused by the last few years have certainly prompted insurers to shift into a higher gear.

According to Allied Market Research, the market for RPA technology globally within the financial services sector is expected to reach US$4.8bn by the end of the decade –up from just US$340mn in 2020. Separate research from McKinsey highlights that the insurance industry has the potential to automate 50-60% of back-office functions by 2025, and RPA plays into a much broader trend of digitisation industry-wide.

It’s a trend that is muchneeded, admits Chris Moore, Head of Lloyds’ syndicate Apollo ibott 1971. Speaking at FinTech LIVE London, Moore says: “I think it’s undoubtedly true that we have to digitise as an industry. Too often, I will be the first to say that the customer experience is awful. I hate buying insurance myself as a consumer. I don’t read my policies because they’re too confusing, even for me in the industry.

“What insurance has relied on is that complacency, that the customer is always going to come to us, they’re always going to buy the insurance from us. We haven’t really modernised our products – most of our products have just sat there on idle, and we haven’t really had this necessity, until very recently, to digitise.”

RPA is first step towards wholesale automation

The growing prevalence of RPA automation within insurance firms can prove invaluable because it allows the freeing up of humans for tasks that require a grasp of emotion, such as empathy.