Document Management for the Digital Insurance Industry

The insurance market is strengthening. According to recent research from Deloitte, last year it saw a 12.7 percent increase to net premiums written, and 2019 is on track for net investment income of almost five percent. What’s more, the industry is evolving as consumers look to streamline policy buying, regulators increase their oversight, and big data — empowered by the $2.5 billion cyber insurance sector — evolves to underpin critical insurance strategies.

The result? For many insurance agencies, document management is complex, convoluted, and frequently time-consuming. Let’s tackle three key pain points (and potential remedies) for providers.

 

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1. Courting the New Consumer

Consumer expectations are changing. While many insurance companies have been slow to adopt digital-native technologies and the emerging role of IoT devices — such as smart home thermostats, speakers, and security systems — consumers equipped with always-connected smartphones and easy access to cloud-based services want more.

Specifically, they want insurance interactions that are frictionless. According to IT Pro Portal, this means policy buying and claim experiences that are “hassle-free, no waiting, and self-service where possible.” Traditional document management policies aren’t up to the task. Manual form entry and filing makes it impossible for companies to keep up with the speed of digital change. Designing applications to handle consumer expectations in-house is also a non-starter, given the time and skill required to build data management apps from scratch.

The solution? Next-gen forms processing software development kits (SDKs) that easily integrate with existing applications to provide accurate optical character recognition (OCR), document cleanup, and — most importantly — automatic data entry. Using this technology, agents can easily obtain the data they need quickly to address new consumer expectations.

 

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2. Regulating Risk

Emerging regulations are increasing the need for advanced data management solutions. Consider GDPR. Under this EU legislation, consumers gain the “right to be forgotten” ASAP after notifying any company that holds their data. In the United States, meanwhile, continuing evolution of the Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule means changes to client-agent interactions to help better protect consumer interests.

The result? Insurance companies need both in-house and web-based document management services that let them easily search for specific data sets, annotate key documents, redact critical information, and leverage verified eSignature technology to ensure both local and international compliance.

 

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3. Managing the Data Deluge

Insurance agencies are now embracing big data to manage policy holder preferences, update insurance coverage, and reduce total risk. As noted by Insurance Journal, 77 percent of property and casualty insurance companies said they planned to implement data-driven “pricing, underwriting, and risk selection” within the next two years.

The challenge? Much of this data is unstructured. Instead of neatly organized tables or charts, it could take the form of .JPG images from policy holder properties, PDFs of client forms, or CAD drawings of commercially insured buildings. Solving this problem means deploying robust document processing tools within current applications to easily convert, edit, and align these images with structured big data sources to develop business strategies on demand.

Insurance is growing — and so are the industry challenges of document management. By deploying digital-native, in-app APIs and SDKs, agencies can improve consumer uptake, reduce total risk, and embrace the impact of big data.