AI’s Role in Unlocking Claims Efficiency
Reuters Events Insurance
Thought leadership and industry analysis to help network, discuss, learn and shape the future of the insurance industry.
Insurance companies are increasingly turning to their claims departments and seeking ways to optimize them. Amidst rising claims costs, claims teams are expected to become more efficient and productive, all the while delivering excellent customer service.
To better understand how claims teams are responding to these aims, we asked our claims community a number of questions based on short-term strategic initiatives. With regards to improving the overall customer experience of interacting with the claims function, our respondents indicated two primary strategies; combining seamless digital experiences with human touch points, and using emerging technologies – such as generative AI – to streamline internal processes. These were identified by 40% and 36% of respondents respectively, and as figure 1 illustrates, were considerably more popular than other strategies within our selection.
While there was perhaps slightly less consensus around the strategies aimed at improving the efficiency of the claims function, a sizeable minority of respondents (43%) stated that they were deploying AI to accelerate data entry and case assignment tasks (figure 2).
Likewise, just over half (51%) of respondents indicated that their organization is looking to automate more repetitive and routine data entry and documentation tasks to make their claims function more productive (figure 3).
领英推荐
In figures 1, 2 and 3, we have highlighted the tasks or strategies that either mention AI explicitly or would be regarded as needing an AI application. As the charts show, AI-related tasks or strategies are among the leading (top two) strategies being pursued by claims teams to improve their customer experience, efficiency and productivity, highlighting the scale of the role AI is set to play within the claims function in the years to come. As a result, we can reasonably conclude that AI is set to be a transformative technology for claims teams.
This is further supported by the fact that nearly two-thirds (65%) of respondents stated that leveraging technology to increase operational efficiency was the best approach to addressing rising costs associated with claims (figure 4). This was the most popular strategy among our respondents by some distance, the second most-popular strategy – mitigating losses associated with fraud – being selected by just 11% of respondents.
Insurers waking up to generative AI
AI is, of course, a broad term that can be applied to a wide array of tools and technologies, some of which have been integrated within departments and functions for many years already. The relatively recent introduction of generative AI has garnered significant interest across industries, and the insurance industry is no different.