casestudy, strategy, Strategy

Sourcing Strategy and Cost Optimization

Sourcing Strategy

For insurance companies operating in today’s highly competitive environment, an effective sourcing strategy is paramount to ensure sustainable growth and profitability. An astute sourcing strategy helps insurers delineate between roles that are core to their business, which should be insourced, and those that can be outsourced for better efficiency and cost structures. Furthermore, by considering offshoring for specific roles or tasks, companies can tap into global talent pools and leverage cost advantages inherent in certain geographies. This strategic decision-making not only optimizes overall operational costs but also ensures that the company retains critical competencies in-house while leveraging external expertise for enhanced scalability and agility.

Case Study

Client: A mid sized P&C insurance carrier had digital assets like online quote and bind, customer

Problem statement:

Client wanted us to broadly answer three questions.

1.What areas/skills I should insource vs outsource?

2.How can I reduce overall cost?

3.Should I offshore? What work/roles I should offshore?

Client had relationship with one global vendor for a long time. Recently started engaging other vendors. CIO had a mandate to reduce expense and improve quality and speed to market.

Our Approach

Current state analysis
– Current landscape from the perspective of people, process, technology and initiatives
– Business strategy and IT strategy
– Feedback and challenges from the customer on the vendor (reviewed internal scoring)
– Collected all the spend data for IT – details at the level of person, role, vendor, rate, engagement/project
Analyze
– Compared vendor rates to industry benchmarks
– Models and options for sourcing with cost and benefits view
– Core vs context and identified key roles
– Identified key features and the needs for realizing them on a mobile app.
Recommendations
– Alignment on the strategy and documenting final recommendation
– Strategies for vendor negotiation.
– Helped negotiate a win-win deal between the largest vendor and the client.
– Identified key roles that was insourced.
– Identified key roles that was context and moved to offshore.

Results

  • Reduced vendor cost by $3M annual based on rate reductions.
  • Pushed work that was non-core to offshore and helped reduce overall IT spend.
  • Improved ratio of employee vs contractor that helped retain knowledge.
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Generative AI in insurance

There is a lot of buzz around Generative AI/Large Language models (LLM) due to ChatGPT, and in this article we will discuss some use cases in the insurance industry and some of the work we have done at acxhange. In this article we will use ChatGPT or LLM interchangeably.

At a high level, ChatGPT (or LLM or Model) can help with the following broad areas.

Information and Knowledge: ChatGPT has been trained on a vast amount of information and can assist with answering questions, providing explanations, and offering insights across various subjects such as science, history, geography, technology, and more. ChatGPT can help you find specific details or offer general knowledge on a wide range of topics.

Language and Communication: ChatGPT can help with tasks related to language understanding, generation, and translation. Whether you need help in writing, proofreading, or coming up with creative ideas, ChatGPT can provide suggestions and guidance. ChatGPT can also help with grammar, vocabulary, and structuring sentences or documents.

Problem Solving and Logical Reasoning: ChatGPT can engage in logical reasoning, critical thinking, and problem-solving discussions. If you need assistance in analyzing a situation, exploring different perspectives, or evaluating potential solutions, ChatGPT can help guide you through the process.

Empathetic Engagement: While ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence and lack emotions, it can still offer support and engage in empathetic conversations. It can provide a listening ear, offer advice, and help you explore your thoughts and feelings. However, it’s important to note that It is not a substitute for professional help, and if you require assistance with serious emotional or mental health issues, it is recommended to reach out to a qualified human professional.

ChatGPT can be applied in various ways within the insurance industry to enhance customer service, streamline processes, and improve efficiency. Below few potential applications across insurance value chain. 

Marketing and sales: ChatGPT can revolutionize marketing and sales in insurance by providing personalized customer interactions, automating lead generation & qualification, and help craft targeted campaigns. Its natural language processing capabilities enable tailored insurance recommendations and prompt responses to inquiries. Analyzing customer data helping identify upselling opportunities, while content creation and social media engagement can enhance brand reach. ChatGPT can be used to automate and streamline processes to boost customer engagement, and drive business growth in the insurance industry.

Customer Support: ChatGPT can be used as a virtual assistant to handle customer inquiries, provide information about policies and coverage, and assist with common customer service tasks. It can answer frequently asked questions, guide customers through claims processes, and offer support in a conversational manner, providing a more efficient and personalized customer experience.

Claims Processing: ChatGPT can help automate parts of the claims processing workflow. By analyzing claim details provided by customers, it can assist in gathering relevant information, verifying policy coverage, and estimating claim amounts. This can expedite the claims process and reduce the need for manual intervention, improving overall efficiency.

Underwriting and Risk Assessment: ChatGPT can assist underwriters by analyzing and interpreting data from insurance applications. It can help identify potential risks, assess policy eligibility, and provide recommendations based on historical data, policy guidelines, and industry regulations. This can streamline the underwriting process and improve decision-making.

Policy Management: ChatGPT can be utilized to manage policy-related inquiries, such as policy modifications, renewals, and cancellations. It can assist customers in understanding their policy terms and conditions, provide premium quotes, and guide them through policy management tasks. This helps enhance self-service capabilities and reduces the workload on customer service agents.

Information Technology: In the realm of Information Technology, ChatGPT proves invaluable for developers and testers, enabling code and script generation, aiding Technical Support with knowledge base creation, documentation, and streamlining routine IT Operations tasks.

It’s important to note that while ChatGPT can automate certain aspects of insurance processes, human oversight and intervention are still necessary, particularly for complex or sensitive situations. Additionally, data security and privacy should be maintained when utilizing AI technologies in the insurance industry.

Here at Acxhange, we have made significant strides in leveraging ChatGPT technology to develop cutting-edge solutions that are currently deployed in production. I am excited to share one such solution.

In the insurance industry, the need to efficiently handle a wide variety of inbound documents on a daily basis is paramount. These documents encompass policy applications, claims forms, supporting materials like medical records or police reports, endorsements, renewals, cancellations, and various other correspondences related to insurance policies. They can arrive via emails, emails with attachments, faxes (yes, they still exist!), and scanned documents. The ability to process these documents accurately and swiftly is crucial for insurers as it directly affects their capacity to deliver prompt and precise services to customers.

While OCR, RPA, and ML technologies have been employed to automate parts of the document processing pipeline, reducing errors and enhancing overall efficiency, a significant portion of the process still remains manual. Manual keying often leads to information loss, and even solutions using OCR, RPA, and ML have fallen short of fully eliminating the need for manual effort.

To address these challenges, we harnessed the capabilities of ChatGPT in language understanding, communication, problem-solving, and logical reasoning. The result is a robust solution that effectively tackles this problem with a higher degree of success. Our solution automates the processing of inbound documents and ensures data integrity, eliminating the loss of valuable information. Moreover, it extracts meaningful insights from these documents, leading to improved experiences for customers, intermediaries, partners, and employees.

By combining the power of ChatGPT with advanced document processing techniques, we have revolutionized the way insurers handle their inbound documents. Our solution enhances efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction by streamlining operations, reducing manual effort, and enabling valuable insights from the data contained within the documents.

We are excited to bring this innovative solution to our clients and empower them to transform their document processing workflows for the better.

 

The architecture includes use of orchestration engine, and we leveraged Microsoft Azure OpenAI service for LLM capabilities which has built-in security and enterprise scalability.  The acxhange solution comprises of multiple components that facilitate the end-to-end processing of incoming documents.

  1. The “Image/PDF to text” component serves as the inbox for all incoming documents, converting image-based PDFs into text format for further processing.
  2. The “Classify” component utilizes the power of ChatGPT to extract relevant information from the documents and classify them into different categories or buckets based on their content.
  3. The “Information Extraction” component handles the second-level extraction, which is tailored to the specific document type. This step focuses on extracting detailed information that is unique to each document category.
  4. Leveraging the extracted content and designed prompts, we enable the system to take the “next best” action. This decision is based on confidence scores, allowing for the implementation of a fully automated workflow or an assisted workflow that involves human intervention.

With our cutting-edge solution powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, we’ve achieved outstanding outcomes for a West Coast-based client, significantly alleviating their operations team’s workload. Witnessing a remarkable 100% classification accuracy, our system ensures precise categorization of documents. By seamlessly implementing automated next best actions, we’ve streamlined their work process, leading to an impressive 60% reduction in processing efforts for complex cases like application submissions, cancelations etc. Our solution efficiently handles these tasks through a seamless automated flow, enhancing overall efficiency and productivity.

We are committed to delivering tangible results quickly, prioritizing your productivity improvement in a matter of weeks, not months. Our accelerated approach is designed to provide a seamless and efficient transition to Generative AI, offering numerous benefits along the way. Below outline of our approach, which will lead you on a transformative journey towards enhanced efficiency and streamlined processing, reaping rewarding outcomes at each stage.

Our approach is designed to expedite your journey into the world of Generative AI, unlocking its rewards and benefits swiftly. Let us be your trusted guide as we embark on this transformative endeavor together, increasing your efficiency, productivity, and overall operational excellence. If you have any questions, please reach out to us.

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Digital First Notice Of Loss

The First Notice of Loss (FNOL) is a critical touchpoint in the insurance customer journey. It’s often the first interaction a policyholder has with their insurer after an incident, and their experience during this process can significantly impact their overall perception of the insurer. In today’s digital age, insurers have an opportunity to revolutionize the FNOL process, making it more customer-centric, efficient, and effective.

A digital FNOL process can be designed to offer customers an intuitive, easy-to-use platform where they can report incidents quickly and accurately. This platform, typically accessible via a mobile app or online portal, should guide customers through the reporting process, prompting them to provide essential information about the incident. It should also allow them to upload relevant documents, photos or videos directly, significantly reducing the need for follow-up communications and speeding up the claims process.

AI-powered chatbots can enhance the digital FNOL experience by providing real-time assistance to customers as they navigate the reporting process. These virtual assistants can answer common queries, clarify doubts, and provide reassurances, ensuring that customers feel supported throughout.

The digital platform should also allow customers to track the progress of their claims in real-time. Transparent updates on claim status, next steps, and estimated timelines can go a long way in assuaging customer anxiety during what can be a stressful time.

Integrating telematics data can further refine the digital FNOL process for auto insurance claims. With customer consent, insurers can access real-time data from connected vehicles, gaining immediate, accurate insights into the incident. This can streamline the claims process and potentially expedite settlements.

From the insurer’s perspective, a digital FNOL process can automate claim routing based on the type and complexity of the claim. Simpler claims can be fast-tracked through an automated process, while complex claims are directed to human adjusters for more detailed investigation. This improves operational efficiency and allows adjusters to focus their efforts where they are most needed.

Data security and privacy should be paramount in the design of the digital FNOL process. Robust encryption and stringent data handling protocols should be implemented to protect sensitive customer data.

In conclusion, a well-designed digital FNOL process can provide customers with a seamless, efficient, and supportive experience during a stressful time. By adopting digital technologies and putting the customer at the center of the FNOL process, insurers can improve customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.

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Digital payment and disbursement

Improving the digital customer experience for insurance customers involves creating a seamless and secure digital infrastructure that not only enhances premium payment procedures but also optimizes claims settlement processes.

For premium payments, insurers should leverage digital payment solutions such as mobile wallets, credit/debit cards, and direct bank transfers. These options give customers the flexibility to pay premiums conveniently from anywhere, at any time. An integrated payment gateway within the insurer’s mobile app or website can make the payment process even more seamless. The interface should be intuitive and user-friendly, ensuring customers can navigate it easily. It should also include features for storing payment information securely for future transactions, thereby making recurring payments hassle-free for the customer.

To further enhance the payment experience, insurers can offer flexible payment plans that cater to customers’ unique financial situations, such as monthly, quarterly, or yearly premium payments. Personalized reminders for due payments, delivered through preferred communication channels like email or SMS, can also improve customer engagement and prevent missed premium deadlines.

From a claims settlement perspective, the key is to provide a fast, transparent, and straightforward process. Insurers can adopt digital technologies to automate and streamline claim reporting, assessment, and payment. Mobile apps can be equipped with features for customers to report incidents, upload supporting documents or photos, and track their claim’s status in real-time. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can further expedite the process by assessing claim validity and estimating payouts based on the data provided.

On the payout side, insurers should offer a variety of disbursement options, such as direct deposits, checks, or digital wallets, allowing customers to choose the one most convenient for them. A simplified and digitized claims process reduces the waiting period for claim settlements, thereby enhancing the customer experience.

Security should be a priority in both payment and disbursement processes. Strong encryption and multi-factor authentication should be employed to protect customer information and prevent fraudulent transactions.

In conclusion, improving the payment processing experience for insurance customers requires a multifaceted approach that merges digital innovation, user-friendliness, flexibility, transparency, and security. By embracing these strategies, insurers can enhance customer satisfaction, increase operational efficiency, and build long-term customer loyalty.

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Strategy

Cloud migration strategy

Transform your insurance business with our expert guidance in crafting a robust Cloud Migration Strategy. At acxhange, we specialize in tailoring cloud solutions to suit the unique needs of insurance clients. Our seasoned consultants work closely with your team to assess existing infrastructure, identify potential migration challenges, and design a seamless migration roadmap that minimizes disruptions while maximizing cost efficiencies and scalability.

With extensive experience in the insurance sector, we understand the criticality of data security and compliance. Our Cloud Migration Strategy emphasizes a secure and compliant approach, ensuring that your sensitive information remains protected throughout the migration process and beyond. By partnering with us, you can accelerate your journey to the cloud, optimize resource utilization, and unlock unparalleled agility, propelling your insurance business into the future.

 

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Digital operations

Embrace the future of insurance operations with our expertise in digital technology. At acxhange, we specialize in helping insurance clients achieve operational excellence through digital transformation. Our seasoned consultants collaborate closely with your team to identify operational inefficiencies, streamline processes, and implement cutting-edge digital solutions that enhance productivity and reduce costs.

With a customer-centric approach, we tailor digital technology solutions to fit your unique operational needs. From process automation to data analytics and AI-driven insights, we empower your insurance business with tools that optimize workflows, boost decision-making, and provide a seamless experience for your clients. Embrace the power of digital innovation and stay ahead in the dynamic insurance landscape with our strategic operational improvements.

 

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Improve the insurance claims experience

Claims is the moment of truth. The digital consumer demands an omnichannel customer experience. Instead of relying on customer service agents to manually collect and input data or provide critical information, customers should be able to serve themselves on their terms.

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Node.js development with TypeScript

Choosing TypeScript over JavaScript for Node.js development can offer numerous benefits. TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript, provides a robust and scalable framework for building large-scale applications, including those run on Node.js.

1. Static Typing: The most significant advantage TypeScript offers over JavaScript is static typing. Static typing means the data type of a variable is checked at compile time, which helps catch errors before the code runs. JavaScript, being dynamically typed, doesn’t offer this level of security, which can lead to runtime errors. Static typing also aids in code documentation, as the type information communicates what the function expects and what it returns.

2. Improved Tooling: TypeScript’s static typing enables better development tools. Features like autocompletion, type inference, and type checking make the development process more efficient and less error-prone. With TypeScript, you can catch a vast majority of errors during the development process itself, rather than discovering them after the deployment.

3. Better Object-Oriented Programming (OOP): TypeScript includes built-in support for implementing object-oriented programming concepts like classes, interfaces, and modules, which JavaScript does not support fully. This makes TypeScript a better option for large-scale applications where code structuring and maintainability are crucial.

4. Backward Compatibility: TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript. This means that valid JavaScript code is also valid TypeScript code. If you’re transitioning from a JavaScript codebase, you can do so incrementally without any breaking changes.

5. Strong Community and Ecosystem: TypeScript, developed and maintained by Microsoft, has a robust and active community. The language has seen steady growth and popularity in the Node.js ecosystem. Moreover, numerous libraries and frameworks have TypeScript definitions, enhancing the developer experience.

6. Easier Debugging: TypeScript’s static typing can help prevent many common mistakes that JavaScript developers encounter, like typos, incorrect uses of ‘null’ or ‘undefined’, and calling functions with the wrong number or type of arguments. All these errors can be caught at compile-time, rather than at runtime, making debugging easier.

7. Better for Large Codebases: TypeScript’s advanced features like namespaces, modules, and interfaces make it more manageable and organized for large codebases. These features can be particularly useful when working with large teams or projects.

In conclusion, while JavaScript is the basis for Node.js and has served its purpose well over the years, TypeScript provides a more modern, safe, and scalable approach. With its static typing and OOP support, TypeScript can lead to more robust, maintainable, and secure Node.js applications, making it a worthy consideration over JavaScript.

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Branching strategy and continuous delivery

Both branch development and trunk development are valid approaches to software development, and the choice between them depends on several factors, such as the size and complexity of the project, the development team’s preferences and workflows, and the development methodology being used (e.g., agile, waterfall).

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