Is Insurance’s “Talent Crisis” Just an Unstructured Data Challenge in Disguise?

Key Takeaways:

✨ Creating operational efficiency: 40% of underwriters' and claims managers' time is spent performing non-core duties. Strategically deploying AI significantly reduces human effort in reviewing, processing and analyzing unstructured data.
✨ Enhancing recruitment and retention: AI allows human experts to focus on more engaging, higher-value tasks, improving job satisfaction and increasing retention in key positions.
✨ Improving the bottom line: AI is key to expanding teams’ capacity without growing headcount.  

Every day, underwriters and claims adjusters spend hours scouring multi-page documents, searching dozens of printed and digital communications and reviewing records they’ve already received (sometimes more than once) through other channels.

And it’s only getting worse.

But what if there were a better way to use this information? How can insurance businesses organize and analyze this data and deliver it in a format that provides a greater understanding of what to do next to ensure the best results for all stakeholders?  

That’s the power of AI.

When deployed strategically, AI reduces the time needed to sort through data from hours to minutes, creating bandwidth to focus on tasks that can’t be outsourced to technology.

“Structuring” Unstructured Data

Insurance is among a handful of industries where data is received through multiple channels, including emails, faxes, online portals and even mailrooms. As a result, underwriting and claims experts rarely receive information structured as needed to do their jobs.

Historically, manually sorting through this glut of documents has been the only way to surface decision data critical to underwriting and claims—and it’s a time-consuming, exhausting and thankless process.

“So often we're taking in information the way the sender wanted to send it to us, and we then have to figure out what to do,” said Bryan Falchuk, President & CEO of PLRB, during a recent Roots Automation webinar.

“We have no clue what’s going to be thrown at us, so we can’t predefine the exact kind of sieve that will pass through, and that to me is where Gen AI, in particular, unlocks the real path going forward.”

Teams using AI to extract information from documents – regardless of how they’re received – are empowered to make more informed decisions quickly and focus on higher-value business functions. But deploying AI into workflows isn’t only about speed. It’s also about helping people make more efficient use of their time.

“I think a lot of the stuff that comes across an adjuster’s desk is duplicates of stuff that’s already come in via multiple channels,” explains Jim Kremer, Managing Director at Ernst & Young. “Generative AI gives you the power to really ignore that because it’s already been seen; it’s already been noted; it’s already been acted upon.”

Augmentation and the Art of Empowerment

The foundation of insurance’s talent crisis is built on everyday decision data challenges that impede value creation.  

“[Consequently], the bottom line is always being squeezed,” observes Jermaine Everett, Roots Automation’s Head of Solution Engineering, who sees technology as a way for companies to continue meeting customers’ needs without worrying about the need to add headcount.  

“There's so many facets related to AI [ that you can talk about], but there's a human story here in the value that companies are also trying to create to be able to still do business as they used to.”

While technology may help to mitigate the talent crunch, it will never replace the need for experienced insurance professionals.

Falchuk observes that the industry has made some progress in recruiting. Still, as polling from Accenture and The Institutes suggests, companies struggle to retain their best people because the work is inefficient and repetitious.  

“If we can do things that make the job that much less painful and exhausting ... and allow you to use your brain for things that are engaging to do, the chance that we will retain the staff that we worked so hard to bring in goes up…” he said.

Kremer is also optimistic about AI's potential to deepen the industry’s talent pool by removing drudgery from day-to-day operations. However, he adds that the window for early adoption by insurance businesses is rapidly closing:

“It’s moving slowly now, and all of a sudden, it’s going to be moving really, really fast. So, getting ahead of this is going to be critical.”

Insurance moves quickly. Prepare for what’s next. Get more insights, use cases, and other resources on using AI to improve your business's operational efficiency and job satisfaction.

Click the link now to view the full discussion, “100x Your Underwriting and Claims Performance with AI,” on-demand.

Want to learn more? Download our latest whitepaper, “Solving the Insurance Industry’s Unstructured Data Challenge with AI.”