I attended the International Claims Association (ICA) Annual Education Conference last week in Denver for the first time. A couple of days prior to the conference I was thinking “I have a lot of work to do. Is this really going to be worth it?” The answer is yes, this conference was worth my time. It was motivating to see how technology and claims management continue to come together. I attended several sessions, but the two that really stuck out for me were the “Group Disability Claims Round Table” and “Leveraging Robotics to Streamline Claim Handling”.
During the Group Disability Claims Round Table there was great discussion on several different topics, but the one I enjoyed the most was regarding how carriers are using analytics to make decisions in their claims management processes. Some are using claims scores to identify which claims can be handled through low or no touch processing. The analytics are reviewing several data points including claims that have the same durations, the majority of the time, the number of times a claims manager has to touch the claim, and the amount of documentation that is required. Using these data points one of the carriers was able to determine they should use a no touch process for pregnancy/maternity claims making the process easier for the claimant and streamlining their process for their claims managers. Analytics have also been used to identify the characteristics that make a good claims manager.
The topic I found most interesting from the Leveraging Robotics to Streamline Claim Handling was Robotic Processing Automation (RPA). Carriers are using RPA to complete high volume repeatable tasks. This allows the Claims Manager to focus on the more complex tasks. When looking at making the change to RPA it is important to examine your processes and make small changes at a time. Recently our Chief Marketing Officer wrote a blog about RPA which you can read here.
Overall, I was inspired to see how claims management continues to innovate and evolve using technology. If you want to find out how technology can help your organization with claims management please visit www.FINEOS.com.
This is the video we showed on our booth during the event:
https://animoto.com/play/HzGxZGVBNoNmM9ZDs4EeQQ
