With rising regulatory requirements and increasingly complex insurance products, insurance carriers are under immense pressure to streamline underwriting and claims workflows. This is why insurance workflow software can be a game-changer for carriers.
It can automate repetitive tasks, improving accuracy and allowing underwriters and claims adjusters to focus on strategic activities instead of mundane tasks.
Below, we’ll explore the top time-saving insurance workflow software solutions to automate key underwriting and claims processes. These tools help insurance carriers speed up decision-making, improve data accuracy, ensure compliance, and enhance customer experience.
But first, let’s talk about the key challenges carriers face on a daily basis.
Key Challenges for Insurance Carriers
Managing Diverse Client Needs
Insurance carriers handle a variety of client types with complex coverage requirements. Underwriters must quickly assess diverse policies and customize them accordingly. Automating client data intake and policy configuration can reduce manual work and improve accuracy.
Regulatory Burdens
Insurance is heavily regulated, and carriers must comply with changing laws and reporting requirements. Workflow automation helps streamline compliance by generating reports and ensuring underwriting decisions align with the latest regulations, reducing risks and penalties.
Streamlining Underwriting
Underwriting involves assessing risks, reviewing documents, and making quick yet informed decisions. Automation can assist by organizing risk data, flagging inconsistencies, and enabling faster, more accurate decision-making. This reduces bottlenecks and enhances the overall efficiency of the underwriting process.
Streamlining Claims
Claims management involves verifying numerous data points, from medical records to invoices. Automation can consolidate information and accelerate decision-making, reducing delays and improving customer satisfaction.
Handling Policy Renewals and Changes
Renewals and policy updates require processing multiple documents and verifying new risk factors. Workflow software automates data collection, renewal reminders, and policy adjustments, improving efficiency and reducing manual errors.
How Can Insurance Workflow Software Enhance Your Underwriting and Claims Workflows?
Insurance workflow software is essential for streamlining underwriting and claims workflows, allowing insurance carriers to handle high volumes of data while ensuring compliance and improving operational efficiency.
When automating key tasks, carriers can reduce manual errors, speed up decision-making, and enhance both their underwriting and claims workflows. Here's how workflow automation can transform these areas:
- Underwriting Workflow Automation
Underwriting involves evaluating risks, reviewing applications, and assessing supporting documents—all of which can be time-intensive. Insurance workflow software automates key underwriting tasks, such as data collection, risk scoring, and document verification.
By integrating automation tools into the underwriting process, carriers can reduce turnaround times, ensure consistency in risk assessments, and enhance decision-making accuracy. For instance, software can flag incomplete applications, auto-populate forms with verified data, and generate risk insights in real-time. This streamlining of workflows allows underwriters to focus on complex cases and deliver better outcomes for clients and carriers alike.
- Claims Workflow Automation
Claims processing involves numerous steps—from data collection to settlement. Workflow automation solutions can significantly improve efficiency in claims management by automatically routing claims through the necessary steps, flagging potential fraud, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Client Portal and Self-Service Options
While client self-service portals are often associated with brokers, they are also highly beneficial for insurance carriers, particularly in claims and policy management. Automation tools can enable carriers to set up portals where clients can submit claims, update information, and track the status of their policies.
These self-service options reduce the workload for underwriting and claims teams by allowing clients to provide required documentation and status updates directly through the portal, ensuring faster processing and fewer errors.
5 Insurance Workflows Carriers Can Automate
Insurance workflow automation can significantly streamline underwriting and claims workflows, reducing manual errors, enhancing speed, and improving operational efficiency. Here are 5 key workflows that insurance carriers can automate to optimize their operations:
1. Policy Issuance and Renewals
Automating policy issuance and renewals ensures faster, more accurate processing by eliminating manual data entry and paperwork. Workflow tools integrated with systems like Salesforce can trigger automated communications, update client records, and generate policy documents in real-time, improving both customer experience and operational efficiency.
Feathery enhances this process by automating document creation, review, and approval workflows, ensuring compliance and reducing delays in policy issuance and renewals.
2. Medical Insurance Claims Processing
Claims processing in the medical insurance domain is complex and highly document-driven. Automation streamlines the intake of medical claims, validates data, and processes claims based on predefined criteria.
You can use Feathery to automate document handling, data extraction, and real-time claim updates, reducing manual entry and speeding up the claims workflows.
3. Underwriting
Streamlining the submission intake process is critical for efficient underwriting. Feathery powers customizable workflows that ensure underwriters receive complete and accurate client data for their assessments.
With Feathery, insurers can automate the intake of submission data, validate information in real-time, and route it directly to underwriting teams. By eliminating bottlenecks in the data collection process, Feathery helps carriers reduce delays, minimize errors, and empower underwriters to focus on making informed risk assessments faster.
4. Claims Fraud Detection
Automation tools that leverage AI and machine learning can identify patterns indicative of fraudulent claims. By integrating fraud detection systems with claims management platforms like Guidewire, insurers can automatically flag suspicious claims for further investigation, improving accuracy and reducing fraudulent payouts.
Feathery assists in this process by automating document verification and ensuring claims details match the policy information, helping to detect fraudulent claims more efficiently.
5. Claims Management Workflow
The claims management workflow can be lengthy and complicated. Automating claims workflows ensures that claims are routed to the appropriate adjusters, documents are processed and stored automatically, and updates are tracked in real-time.
Feathery streamlines this by automating document intake, categorization, and claims validation, ensuring that claims are handled more efficiently and accurately at every step of the workflow.
How to Choose the Right Insurance Workflow Software
Choosing the right insurance workflow software can feel like a chore, but it is necessary if you want to streamline your operations, improve efficiency, and maintain compliance.
When evaluating options, it’s essential to look for software that aligns with your business needs and integrates seamlessly with existing tools. Here’s what to consider:
1. Customization and Flexibility
Insurance workflows often vary significantly across different policy types, underwriting processes, and claims-handling procedures. The software you choose should offer customization options that allow you to adapt workflows to meet your specific requirements.
With Feathery, for example, you can create custom workflows that match your underwriting and claims workflows, ensuring each step is tailored to your business needs. A flexible system means that as your business grows or the market changes, you can easily adjust your processes without a complete overhaul.
2. Integration with the Insurance Stack
Integration is key for efficiency, especially when you need to connect to other core systems like CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce), financial planning tools, or claims management systems like Guidewire.
The right insurance workflow software should allow you to seamlessly integrate with these platforms to consolidate client data, policies, and financial information. Feathery’s integration capabilities help automate data flows between your systems, reducing manual entry and improving both underwriting and claims assessments. This ensures faster decision-making and greater accuracy.
3. Security and Compliance
Choose software that offers robust security features and ensures compliance with industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulatory requirements. Feathery is designed with built-in compliance tools that help insurance carriers manage their workflows securely. With features like data encryption, secure data storage, and automated audit trails, Feathery helps you stay on top of regulations and avoid costly fines while ensuring that your client data remains protected.
4. User-Friendly Interface
A user-friendly interface is essential to ensure that your teams can quickly adopt and efficiently use the software. Complicated systems can lead to errors and inefficiencies. Pick software that allows your staff to focus on higher-value tasks rather than getting bogged down by manual processes, improving both operational efficiency and employee satisfaction.
Feathery Customer Stories
MassMutual
Feathery played a pivotal role in transforming MassMutual’s data intake process for their commercial benefits line of business. Handling producer licenses and various documents such as PDFs and CSVs—was time-consuming and error-prone.
By automating this process, Feathery enabled MassMutual to drastically reduce the time spent on data entry and processing. The software seamlessly extracted key data from diverse document formats, ensuring that all necessary information was captured and integrated into MassMutual's internal systems with accuracy.
"Our goal was to eliminate the tedious manual processes that bog down underwriters. By automating the intake and processing of documents, we're helping companies like MassMutual save valuable time and focus on what really matters—assessing risk and making informed decisions," — Peter Dun, Founder & CEO, Feathery.
Secura
Feathery supported Secura's digital team by automating intake workflows for their Commercial Property and Auto Insurance. The integration of automation tools streamlined their workflows, reducing the time spent on manual data entry and enabling their team to focus on more strategic tasks.
“Our automation tools have empowered Secura’s team to focus on strategic tasks by streamlining their data intake processes.” — Peter Dun, Founder & CEO, Feathery.
FAQ
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A workflow in the insurance industry refers to a series of automated or manual processes designed to handle tasks such as policy issuance, underwriting, claims processing, and compliance management. These workflows ensure that insurance operations are completed efficiently, consistently, and with minimal errors. For example, claims workflows might involve the intake of customer data, document verification, fraud detection, and settlement—all organized in a streamlined manner.
Insurance adjusters often rely on specialized software to assess claims, document damages, and process settlements efficiently. Popular tools include:
- Guidewire ClaimCenter: A robust claims management system designed to automate claims workflows and improve processing accuracy.
- Xactimate: Commonly used for property damage estimation, allowing adjusters to calculate repair costs quickly.
- Feathery: Known for automating document intake, claims routing, and compliance tasks to save time and reduce manual errors.
These tools help adjusters manage claims with greater speed and precision, enhancing customer satisfaction.
For insurance workflows, it’s essential to use platforms designed to meet industry-specific requirements like compliance, data management, and process automation. Here are some of the best tools for creating and automating workflows in the insurance sector:
- Feathery: A highly customizable platform that streamlines submission intake for underwriting and claims management, ensuring seamless data collection and routing to underwriters or claims adjusters.
- Guidewire: A comprehensive solution for policy, billing, and claims management with built-in workflow automation capabilities tailored to insurance operations.
- Salesforce for Insurance: Offers robust workflow automation tools for CRM, policy management, and agent collaboration, tailored specifically for the insurance industry.
- Majesco: Provides end-to-end insurance solutions, including workflow automation for underwriting, claims, and policy administration.
- Duck Creek: A powerful insurance platform with configurable workflows that support underwriting, claims, and policy lifecycle management.
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