When people file insurance claims, the last thing they want is to wait a long time for it to be processed. Insurance companies in the past had to deal with a lot of paperwork to go through the hundreds, if not thousands, of claims filed daily. Unfortunately, some get handled poorly, lost, or fraudulent. The emergence of digital mailrooms was necessary to curb this problem.
What is Claim Management in Insurance?
It refers to identifying, controlling, and resolving demands by public entities or individuals to recover losses from any association member. The process involves skills in insurance law, investigation/adjusting, and general business.
Claim management is the myriad of services or advice given by firms concerning claims of compensation, restitution, reparation, or any other remedy for financial loss or breach of a contractual obligation. They offer advice to ensure they get the total funds they are entitled to; claim management also helps reduce the operational burden associated with registering claims.
Challenges with Manual Mail Processing
Before claims resolution, it usually goes through several steps. The process is like this to ensure that the necessary information is present and the claim's authenticity is valid. During this time, the claimant’s policy also undergoes review.
As a result, if the process involves paper management, you will likely experience slow response times and inefficiencies. Insurance companies are familiar with this, especially when getting thousands of claims every week.
Documents such as enrolment forms, checks, grievances, and appeals and claims are sometimes misplaced or lost in countless. The problem becomes even worse if there are time-sensitive tasks involved.
Manual mail processing also requires intense manual labor to open and sort the mail. Employees then have to input the data into existing systems for processing. Filing and storage systems will also increase along with the need to create space for more paperwork. Productivity may also decrease with the amount of time spent handling the mail and paper claims.
The Steps of Processing Insurance Claims in the Digital Mailroom
Adopting a digital mailroom might be necessary to reduce facility costs, save on labor, and ensure that everything runs smoothly. In addition, consumers are used to online and real-time transactions, which can increase the customer experience, especially with insurance claims, and help move things faster. The following are some ways that insurance companies can shorten the turnaround time:
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Evaluation of the Correspondence Landscape
A cross-functional team that will form the groups that involve insurance claims should exist, for example, in claims adjudication. The team should then take a complete inventory of the enterprise's inbound and outbound customer correspondence, including paper, fax, and email. After the list, rationalization of the correspondence can then follow.
For example, you can rationalize correspondence and standardize templates and forms, thus eliminating the need to generate correspondence such as marketing campaigns, frequent notices, and, most importantly, low coverage policy change requests or claims.
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Redesigning Operating Processes
To modernize the mailroom, you might require smart intake solutions that utilize machine learning and optical character recognition to automate data extraction and translate it into digital content. It should also apply robotics to process transactions. For example, Optical Character Recognition or OCR software will scan insurance claims, and the data will be transferred and stored seamlessly on computers, thus creating efficiency. The manual and repetitive tasks are automated.
When redesigning your operating models, you might eventually need to decide whether to build or buy. You can also outsource mailroom functions to a speciality firm.
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Implementation of a Digital Mailroom
Operationalisation of the digital mailroom brings about several changes, including technology interventions, sourcing partners, and process improvements. The shift also involves a dedicated project team in every work stream and investments in advanced technology solutions, especially high-performance mailroom infrastructure to open envelopes and scan documents. They also auto-sort, index, and extract data. Robotics process automation (RPA) and workflow integration—all of this aids in improving overall productivity and increasing the effectiveness of the operations.
How Does Digital Mailroom Speed Up Your Insurance Claims?
One of the most common challenges insurance companies face is the loads of paperwork they have to deal with, especially with insurance claims. Digital mailroom solutions help move things along much more swiftly in insurance companies. With a digital mailroom, the following are some of the benefits you will enjoy:
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Faster Processing
Manual insurance processing involves documents getting to the mailroom, from application submissions, document classifications, then policy changes to claim forms and notices to reach the mailroom. The valuation process begins after manual screening and digital conversion. For example, policyholders sometimes get angry and irritated if they realise that the claims handling process is taking too long to process.
Procedures sometimes vary because they have different forms and formats exclusive to specific divisions or business units, thus adding additional time consuming processes. Digital mailrooms, however, are much faster as they scan documents quicker and enter the data into the system. In addition, intelligent document processing software helps address these issues. OCR, for example, reads texts from documents, then optically identifies content and detects text.
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Less Risk of Fraud
The manual handling of insurance claims has a higher risk of mistakes, and this is because fraud detection falls under an individual's judgment. Digital mailrooms, on the other hand, are thorough and meticulous. Nothing gets by the digital mailrooms because they are automated to detect any abnormalities or suspicious paperwork. In addition, the OCR allows for proper data validation and verification to help contribute to the accurate output. For example, an automated system can verify data to confirm correlations between claims or recurring claims.
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Getting More Clients
OCR also helps insurance companies retain and get more clients as things move faster and more effectively. There are also automated analytics tools that help evaluate policies and match them with current products offered by the business to assess if insurance companies can provide better customer choices. For example, digital mailrooms also present an analysis for forecasting needs, thus comparing products and services with their competitors to help improve and offer solutions.
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Transparent and Useful
Information and details being accessible online help in increasing transparency. An instance of this is the valuable data dashboards that provide a consolidated picture of customer profiles. In addition, artificial intelligence is present to recognize potential fraud and inform the relevant parties. The technique has proven useful and helped reduce cases resulting from fraud.
What Is the Importance of Claim Turnaround Time?
Extended claims settlement processing time leads to higher costs and brings about a negative impact on profitability. On the other hand, shortening the insurance claims processing time comes with several advantages. The following are some of the benefits of a digital mailroom.
Insurance companies want to be better than their competitors and offer more quality services and products faster. Increased levels of automation will make the payouts fast and efficient, thus increasing customer retention.
The integration of digital technologies by insurance companies has helped reduce claim expenses and increase customer satisfaction. As a result, the insurance field is more competitive because of customer-centricity, which has led relevant actors to become interested in innovative business models.
Experience You Can Trust for Insurance Digital Mailrooms
If you are looking into intelligent mail solutions for your insurance company, consider Exela. Their software auto-scans and processes incoming mail documents and routes them as required. In addition, Exela offers convenience; they can deposit your checks that come through the mail, so you don't have to rush to the bank.
Other services include editing your mail, which can be through adding notes or redacting notes. They send unscannable mail to you and store it for up to 30 days. One highlighted feature is the built-in signature that can sign documents and request signatures in one platform. They also offer this at an affordable price, so if you are looking for reliable mailroom automation, get Exela today.
Conclusion
Digital mailrooms are the future of insurance companies, and the high scanning rate ensures that all the paperwork involved gets handled much faster and more effectively. Most insurance companies engage in digital mailroom outsourcing to enjoy the benefits. Customers appreciate their claims getting attended to timeously. In addition, you also save on costs from having employees take on the labour.