Most insurance brokers and agents find the standard process of obtaining loss runs to be downright painful. The single biggest problem for them is to find where to order them in the first place. A professional who worked with a carrier for many years found the process to be far too time consuming. The reason being it is way too complicated and confusing. In fact, it is complicated enough to dissolve a growing relationship between an agent and a policy purchaser
Imagine a scenario where you receive a regular proposal for submission for the proposed insured. Consider that there are at least half a dozen losses over the past six years, across multiple carriers. Even if you have your ace agents put to the task, they might need at least a few weeks to gather all the loss history. The hassles won’t end there as your underwriter will have to then sift through multiple papers to understand the history.
It can be as harrowing as it can get. However, there is an easy way to overcome this problem. And that is automation. It is not simply automation, but intelligent automation. This is precisely what we will be talking about in this article. We take a look at how you can make use of intelligent automation tools to make loss run reporting a seamless process.
The loss run reports have a significant amount of data often presented in different ways. Not every company will use the same format for reporting, which further adds to the problems. It can become difficult for you to adapt templates or use automation tools for data extraction.
The loss run reports have a policy number, type of claim, reason for the claim, loss report date, monetary amounts, and many other details. Any underwriter will have to analyse each information individually and add it to the underwriting system. Now, it is not only time-consuming and effort-intensive, there is every chance of errors as well.
You would already know how costly these errors can be. These can lead to incorrect policy prices, which can be either too high or too low. If it is on the lower side, it puts the insurer at the risk. Similarly, if it is too high, it will not be in sync with the level of risk and will not guarantee the sale of the policy.
As a reliable insurance company, you need a well-informed underwriting process. Here are some ways how automation can help you.
The manual loss run process can easily take up to a week to generate the quote. It is thus not surprising for a carrier to resort to it only during the underwriting stage. Doing it for small policies with small premium amounts doesn’t make sense keeping in mind the time and costs involved. Now, when you get automated loss runs, you will give your underwriters the information they need at the right time.
When it is easier to source them due to automation, you can also get them for all sorts of policies at all stages, from quote to policy lifecycle. It makes sense economically and allows you to fulfil your obligations of providing the loss history to agents who request the information.
It is not possible to evaluate complete risks with manual loss runs processing. There is every possibility of some information getting missed here and there. It is also not possible for carriers to know whether they have all the information they need. What does this lead to? Incorrect processing of applications can create issues at a later stage. With automation and having a loss history database, you can get access to all the past and present information you need to identify risks and find out areas that need further investigation.
When you have data in multiple formats and information in heaps of paper, it can be a chaotic situation, to say the least. The quality of information will surely be thrown out of the window. A single error can lead to erroneous pricing, which will lead to claim losses. You can get standard data through automated loss runs. You not only get a better quality of data but also insights into policy renewal, claim adjudication, and endorsements.
Your underwriting resources can do a lot more than just doing data entry work or scratching their heads to extract relevant data from heaps of papers. When you pay them higher salaries, you also need to look at the output from your resources. With the help of automation, you can make your underwriting team work on more complex tasks that are not mundane.
It will be an excellent value addition for your business. Furthermore, it will also help your underwriters learn something skillful that will help them in advancing their career. The senior resources of your underwriting team who work on complex tasks can also handhold and teach the junior resources on how to go about overcoming loss run challenges.
At Insurance Back Office Pro, we believe in timeliness and have adopted this principle for our insurance loss run processing service. We commit to on-time report generation and make this a reality by working directly with insurance carriers. Our experienced team can identify errors in the reports in minutes and offer timely suggestions to avoid issues that can arise later. This helps you save precious time and the back and forth that usually accompanies such tasks.
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