Four Ways Big Data, Analytics and Business Process Management are changing the insurance industry

Zaizi

Let’s think about Big Data as a way to collect both your moments and engagement with every “thing” around you and also the communication of “things” (i.e. machines) amongst each other. Then, these traces will be collected to associate and predict patterns in almost any industry.

2015 has been deemed the year of technology driven transformation in the insurance sector. The speed of change in an industry that has long been characterised as a slow adaptor of technology is gathering pace and we look at 4 big ways Data, Analytics and Business Process Management are paving the way to these changes. 

Fighting fraud

It is important for banks and insurance companies to seek for ways that reduce the number of potential losses as well as costs from claims processing and collection recovery situations. Mainly, this is done by attempting to gain insight into customer interactions and behaviours across different channels. One possible way is using graph analytics which are among the most promising big data applications scientists are working with today. These new types of analytics can be used to fight whiplash for cash scams. In graph analysis, insurance companies can perform analysis on huge amounts of data in much better performance and less time compared to traditional techniques in order to find suspicious behaviours. Thus, they can follow the whole fraud trail of all people and cars involved to detect whether they are involved in other accidents along with different degrees of connection among them. 

Improving customers’ health while reducing risk

Big Data will enable insurance companies to gain a better understanding of their customers’ health over the life of a policy. With the rapid growth of the wearable technology market, insurance companies can build up loyalty programs using apps that turn fitness achievements into loyalty points. Nonetheless, these apps can track the behaviour of customers while encouraging them to improve their lifestyle. Insurers can make use of these data points to reduce risks and enhance loyalty and retention. On the other hand, customers who improve their health habits can access different coupons and discounts in their shopping and leisure activities and also get better prices on insurance company’s products.

Improving customer experience

Social media is also a potentially large and profitable channel for insurance companies to use for competitive advantage. It can be potentially used to acquire a significant number of new clients, through social media analytics capabilities. It offers a unique cross-selling opportunity through linking social activity and profiles and insurance services consumption of the existing customers. It can be made use for assessing the quality of service, through early identification of customer dissatisfaction through customer service, brand sentiments and initiating marketing campaigns in response to trending or popular events.

In summary, social media offers an optimal solution and platform where intraday operational activity of potential and current customers on the internet can be monitored. Selling opportunities can be identified and demands and sentiments identified and analyzed in real-time.

Personalised evidence-based policies

Insurance companies rely on growing their number of customers by adapting insurance policies for each individual customer through fine-grained analytics. In telematics insurance, predictive analytics can help insurers get more accurate evidence-based insights about breaking speed limit and unsafe driving. In this case, these customers might lose points or get higher fees. Thus, Predictive models might then be used to analyze such risks or to give a personalized service to customers.  Besides, Big Data analytics applications can be used to automatically assign the right claim adjuster to the right claim which will in terms result in improving claim duration and improve customer experience.

Big Data will enable resilient processes within the insurance companies especially when natural disasters occur where insurers want to settle claims in a short matter. Big Data can help by analyzing claims data in a quicker manner to assign the right claim adjusters and also setting the right limits for claim payouts. 

Solutions

Business Process Management solutions with strong document management capabilities are now enabling the flexibility and streamlined workflows needed in the Insurance Industry, where coordination of knowledge, content, correspondence and human tasks all now need to be managed and controlled.

By Ali Rebaie, Industry Analyst

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