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Lack of data standardisation is a pain point for the insurance industry globally. Insurance companies use different types of forms and data capture options to gather information from their customers, increasing the risk of inefficient operations. To ride over this bump, insurance firms, as well as brokers, need to create a data management strategy that encourages data standardisation software and tools. Uniform and consistent data drives overall business growth as well. By using similar platforms, insurance providers are giving their vendors an opportunity to automate processes, resulting in reduced operating costs, decreased error rates, streamlined processes and eventually happy customers.

THE ‘STANDARDS’ ISSUE

ACORD, a non-profit organization that provides the global insurance industry with data standards, points out that standards are key for the insurance industry due to these three factors:

• Wide variation: Each of the stakeholders in the insurance industry – carriers, reinsurers, agents, brokers and third-party software vendors – has varying functional and technical demands as well as goals and objectives.
• Exponential data growth: The speed and magnitude of key customer data that is captured has been increasing over the past decade.
• Industry change: The insurance industry faces many macroeconomic, technical and demographic changes fuelling the need for uniform data capture methods. Increasing consumer demand, a rapidly ageing workforce and technology obsolescence are some of the changes that accelerate the need for standard data.

With digital innovation and collaboration taking place at a rapid rate in the insurance business, data standardisation will help drive data sharing strategies designed to reduce costs and develop new products across the value chain. Standardizing how data is received, for example by using an OCR reader, will go a long way in automating certain customer onboarding processes. Similarly, using excel sheets to store information such as premium details, can reduce manual errors.

THE RRD PLUS

As a multi-pronged serviced provider, RRD plays an important role in helping insurance stakeholders create a uniform data strategy. RRD’s subject-matter experts work with clients in the insurance and financial services space to build solutions that support complex processes. With presence across 200 locations, RRD utilises global resources on a 24x7 basis that provides substantial cost savings to customers.

RRD has been able to build a centre of excellence specifically for the insurance domain with a client-first strategy that accelerates collaborative transformation. In data management, the following tools created by RRD help insurers and other stakeholders receive and process information uniformly.

• Smart Text Recognition: This solution can be used for policy processing where information is available in the form of a scanned image. The tool helps agents to verify/match policy information easily without the need for manual checks.
• Document Content Comparer: This technology could be used to compare documents without manual intervention, speeding up the process and cutting down on costs and errors. Metrics
• Virtual Processor: This is an automation tool that is based on Autonomics using Microsoft technologies. It reads images via OCR technology and makes decisions based on business rules. The tool augments human operators, with Virtual Agents to carry out rule-driven business processes. Metrics Virtual Processor supports email notifications and maintains a live dashboard on updates.