Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the group and voluntary benefits industry, especially during periods of high business activity when human resources are extremely thin and with a growing number of generational segments of employees who have different needs.
By streamlining quotes, optimizing resources and automating manual tasks, AI can help increase group insurance sales, increase profitability and improve the customer experience. As a result, 74% of insurance executives plan to increase their investment in AI. Insurers who seize this opportunity early will have a decisive advantage in meeting changing customer needs, optimizing operations and driving growth.
How can group and voluntary benefit insurance providers leverage AI to maximize sales and remain competitive?
Customize and recommend alternative plan designs with AI
Traditional new business and renewal processes can be time-consuming and result in missed opportunities. It is helpful for sales and underwriting teams to have data-backed reference points when designing plans for clients.
Using predictive analytics, insurance companies can quickly generate alternative plan designs using one of their most valuable assets: data.
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7;s how it works: using an AI recommendation engine, carriers can use their historical sales data to identify the best-selling plan designs for similar customers. Recommendation engines, such as those offered by the Majesco Global IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench, will pull data for similar groups (size, geography, industry) and suggest an alternative plan design that can be presented alongside the handpicked plan.This serves as a powerful benchmarking tool while bypassing data limitations in group insurance as it uses carrier data. AI can also be trained to suggest up-sell and cross-sell opportunities on optional workplace products and improve the plan member experience while unlocking new revenue opportunities. Some factors it might consider to recommend products might be age, gender, activity level, job role and more.
These tools not only help insurers leverage valuable existing revenue streams, but also reduce quote processing time, resulting in a better customer experience.
Optimize Underwriting
During periods of high load, the volume of quotes requiring review by underwriters can slow down processes due to an inefficient allocation of human resources.
Underwriters have different levels of expertise across different products and quote complexities. In addition, managers must also consider their existing workload. As a result, quotes can sit for days or even weeks before they can be reversed.
AI can help underwriters suggest the most efficient distribution of quotes across the underwriting team, taking into account an individual underwriter’s current capabilities, expertise and performance history.
Additionally, AI can prioritize offers with the highest chance of closing based on past success. By identifying these resource efficiencies, insurers can write more business in less time while improving close relationships.
Optimize operations by automating manual tasks and processing quotes faster
The influx of Requests for Proposal (RFP) can create unwanted friction and increase quote processing time. To compile a group benefits quote, sales and underwriting teams must gather and process several key pieces of information from various sources. These may include past plan booklets, policy summaries, headcount files, past claims experience and general client information (industry, size, location).
Here’s the problem – this data often comes in different formats, and it’s often not delivered in the form of structured data. In other words, it cannot be captured automatically by digital tools. As a result, underwriting teams lose countless hours recoding information into their internal systems.
This is where AI comes in.
AI systems can extract information from broker emails, attachments and RFP source files using techniques such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify and process unstructured data captured in PDF files, images, “back of a napkin” and other formats.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be used to train an AI system to read an RFP booklet, learn carrier-specific terms and abbreviations, and generate a quote based on the information discovered in the source document. These automated processes not only save time but also reduce errors, resulting in an improved customer experience.
Once the raw data has been collected, it can be converted into structured data in the insurance company’s format and sent directly to their quote portal or underwriting workbench.
AI leveraged in this way can drastically reduce the time it takes to compile a group benefits quote, contribute to improved close relationships and foster better relationships with your distribution partners.
Leverage AI Chatbots to create new revenue opportunities
Gone are the days of boring, frustrating chatbots that pop up when you least want them. The release of ChatGPT in Fall 2022 showed the true promise of generative AI.
By using AI-powered chatbots, group insurance companies can provide immediate assistance and answers to customer questions, providing a better customer experience. These tools can be trained to learn an insurance company’s products, policies and general “language,” helping customers fully understand their benefit plan.
Chatbots can also be used to identify potential up-sell and cross-sell opportunities for voluntary benefits, improving overall sales and profitability. By integrating with health data providers (eg Fitbit) and behavioral data tools, this functionality can become even more personalized and tailored to the individual’s unique situation and goals.
While agents and brokers cannot offer personalized advice to thousands of individual insureds with varying needs and skill levels, technology can. Digital assistants and chatbots can provide valuable guidance to plan members, answer questions, guide them through the enrollment process, and recommend new products and services based on their health and demographic information.
The best digital assistants are proactive, not reactive, providing helpful nudges to users at the right time.
For example, Sun Life’s AI-enabled “digital coach,” Ella, encourages plan members to take action on important deadlines, cost savings, and product offers. Ella’s proactive pushes resulted in nearly two million additional plan member interactions early in the pandemic from January to September 2020.
Sun Life’s investment in virtual coaching paid off. Thanks to Ella’s interventions at the right time to the right user, the company experienced an 83% increase in purchased additional coverage compared to the previous year. This success demonstrates the power of digital assistants in providing personalized education and guidance to insurance customers.
Embrace the potential
AI is poised to revolutionize the group insurance industry, bringing significant benefits to both insurers and customers. By streamlining quotes, optimizing resources, automating manual tasks and improving customer service, insurance companies can increase group insurance sales, improve profitability and provide a better customer experience.
The production-proven Majesco Global IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench has been adopted by 20+ major carriers across North America. To take your group and voluntary benefits business to the next level, Majesco Global IQX Sales & Underwriting Workbench offers a set of AI-powered tools for employee benefits carriers. These include AI-assisted census file scrubbing, a predictive analytics recommendation engine that helps unlock optimal plan designs, AI-powered quote assignments and more. And check out this webinar[DG1] with Canada Life’s Bryan Strang on the business and customer value of AI-powered sales and underwriting workbench.
Today’s blog is co-authored by Denise Garth, Chief Strategy Officer at Majesco, and Mike de Waal, SVP Group Insurance, Majesco.
[DG1]Underwriting in the Digital Age for Group, Voluntary Benefits and Workplace – Gaining a Competitive Edge (majesco.com)
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