Insurance brokers: Save 15-20 minutes per letter when processing policy-renewals and lapse-notifications
Implement insurance bots to prevent lapses and increase policy renewals—sending thousands of letters a day!
Notifying your policyholders that their policies are due for renewal is a massive challenge for your insurance brokerage.
This isn’t a one-time thing. It’s an everyday, tons-of-manual-effort thing. It’s essential for maintaining recurring revenue—and keeping your policyholders covered.
The reason for the added complexity—and work—is the nature of the assignment. You don’t simply send a note saying, “Renew now.” You need to generate, and send, an entire sequence of properly-timed “touch points” in order to gently (and then, increasingly urgently) remind your policyholders that they need to renew.
That “sequence of touch points” typically works out to:
- First notification at 60 days prior to policy expiration.
- Second notification at 30 days prior.
- Third notification at two weeks prior.
- Fourth notification at one week prior.
- Final notification the day of the expiration. (You also need to trigger the 30-day grace period at this time.)
Do you think that all of your brokers are doing this, for all of their accounts, every day? They need to first check to see which policies are coming due for renewal, and when. And then they need to generate, and send, exactly the right notification at exactly the right time. Every time. For every policyholder.
For a typical insurance brokerage, this detailed, difficult, and time-consuming manual effort amounts to hundreds, often thousands of notifications that must be sent, every single day.
It’s a daunting challenge. But your brokerage—not to mention your policyholders’ peace of mind—depends on it.
Here’s the good news: You can now automate this entire process.
It’s true. “Automation for insurance policy-renewal and lapse-notification processing” is defined as using modern digital technology, such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence, or AI, to scour policyholder data sets and then generate and send the perfectly-timed sequence of touch-points required in order to maximize renewals and minimize policy lapses.
In this article, we’re going to show you exactly how this can be done, thanks to The Lab. We’ll use, as an example, an actual robotic process automation or RPA bot which we recently implemented at an actual insurance brokerage.
We’ve even created a fun video showing it at work (watch for “Albert,” our brilliant bot, in it!), which you can view right here:
In order to avoid lapses in coverage—and lost revenue—when it comes to automating policy-renewal notifications, the bot in this example begins by logging in to the brokerage’s agency-management system or AMS. It has its own login and password, just like a person.
Note that insurance RPA bots from The Lab can work with any AMS that your insurance brokerage uses. These include:
- Applied Epic
- AMS360
- QQCatalyst
- ELynx
- AgencySmart
- Jenesis
- BriteCore
The bot in the example video is using Applied Epic.
As we describe the process that follows, bear in mind that, regardless of the AMS you use, your staff still would need to click through dozens of screens to process even a single renewal-notification letter. That’s why bots are so much better suited to this task!
(Incidentally, this RPA use-case is just one of hundreds that we can implement for any insurance brokerage. Another great example: Be sure to check out our fascinating article—and embedded video—about processing online applications for specialty coverage policies, too.)
Once the bot logs in to the AMS, it filters the accounts for the “Renewal” code. It then—faster than a person could—studies the first account on the filtered list to see 1) which renewal notice(s) have already been sent to that policyholder, and 2) which type of notice (i.e. 60-day, 30-day, two-week, one-week, or “today”) needs to be sent right now.
Now the bot tells the AMS to attach a document to that first account. It next opens a Word doc template (that’s right: it switched applications, just like a person), where it completes all the required fields, including contact information, policy number, expiration date, and more.
It then saves that completed Word doc as a PDF, and attaches it, too. The bot then updates the email distribution contacts, to make sure that the letter gets sent to the right recipients.
The bot then launches a third system, Outlook, and sends the notification to the policyholder, cc’ing the broker for that policy.
It’s not done. The bot now switches back to the AMS, where it updates the renewal code to indicate that, say, the 30-day notification has been sent—and that the two-week notification will be the next one in the queue… to be sent in exactly 14 days.
It’s still not done. All that work was just for the first account! The bot now cycles back to the second one, and keeps on plugging along, without ever taking a break or even making a typo.
And so, for every single account, on just the right day, this one bot sends reminders at 60 days, 30 days, two weeks, and one week, as needed, updating the AMS every time.
It even sends out a “final notice” on the day of the expiration, if needed, and flags the system to start the 30-day grace period. How brilliant is that?
It takes a person about 15 to 20 minutes to process a single renewal-notification letter. The bot does each one in just one minute—and never forgets to send the letter, like a broker might.
This incredible robot not only eliminates tons of human effort, but it also helps prevent policy lapses, while maximizing timely renewals.
Insurance executives are turning to The Lab to accelerate automation/AI readiness, lay the groundwork for strategic end-to-end process/product innovation, and implement Robotic Process Automation (RPA) “bots” to automate dozens of processes. With as few as three RPA bots from The Lab, you, too, can begin implementing on your company-wide strategic innovation roadmap—and start seeing hard-dollar benefits within weeks.
The best way to appreciate the speed and game-changing power of the automation suites installed by The Lab is to see it for yourself. Schedule a free, no-obligation 30-minute screen-sharing demo with The Lab, and you’ll see RPA bots in action. You’ll learn how we do all this from our U.S. offices in Houston, with nothing outsourced or offshored, and get all your questions answered by our friendly experts. Hedge your company against employee turnover, eliminate errors, and put your organization on a roadmap to accelerate your automation and AI initiatives. Simply call (201) 526-1200 or email info@thelabconsulting.com to book your demo today!