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Insurance Peer Review Just Got Easier, Thanks to Process Automation

The peer review process is more important than ever in an era of strict regulations compounded by challenging economic and competitive conditions. It’s no secret that peer review is a necessary, but lengthy process. At least it used to be.  

Our work with insurers and underwriters has revealed the advantages of taking a digital process automation (DPA) approach to peer review. Not only does it save employees time, but it also enhances the quality of the review process. And perhaps most importantly, ensures that firms are both internally and externally compliant. Here’s three ways that a DPA approach could help your underwriters.

 

Act with certainty when it comes to compliance 

The casual approach to peer review of discussions around a boardroom table are all well and good, but leave no audit trail, which makes it hard to prove compliance. Regulators are increasingly analyzing insurance claims. Insurers need to be able to demonstrate best practice to the authorities, including the review process. 

A DPA approach means that when it’s time to audit your policies, you can do so at the click of a button. All decisions that are made as part of the underwriting and review process are accurately documented and saved in your system. So, you can ensure that all your work is completed in line with internal guidelines.  

An agile approach to compliance also means that you’ll always be ready to respond to new rules of business needs. Yes, speed is important to business. But if your new peer review process doesn’t comply or cannot adapt to the latest external regulations, then it could be a case of one step forwards, two steps back.

 

Develop a pro-active approach to peer-review 

The days of chasing your colleagues to review policies are long gone. By digitizing the system, automated prompts can be sent out to users with direct links to all the information that they need, updated in close to real-time. This includes historic records so that underwriters have a point of reference to make an informed decision on their approvals. 

If you’re concerned about lost time while updating your system, you needn’t be. We worked with a leading UK underwriter, who rank in Lloyds of London’s top quartile for claims management to create a solution for their 20-year old legacy system. The system had led to a backlog of around 500 pending items due to the very manual internal process of completing reviews.  

Bizagi consultants worked with the company over an intensive eight-week period to build out a pilot workflow. Within four months, a centralized system to house all elements of the peer review process had been built and set live.  

Users spent 25% less time on the peer review process as they no longer had to cross check documents across numerous separate databases and systems, nor did they have to chase each other with emails. The system automatically emails users every morning with a prompt, listing their outstanding tasks. This enables management to escalate cases based on SLAs and presents them with a complete audit trail of all actions taken in the review process. So, when Lloyd’s quarterly audit comes around, the company have a central audit trail.  

 

Centralize your data  

As proven by our clients, peer review doesn’t have to be such a time-consuming, manual process. By creating a centralized repository that pulls in data from all your systems via APIs, users can spend less time gathering information for peer reviews and get to centralized underwriting policies.  

They can also gain access to historic review information. By viewing previous policies, employees can make a more informed decision reviewing policies as they will have more precedents readily available.. The same approach can be taken towards quote review and external review so that your supporting platform hosts all relevant information in one central repository.  

Not only does a centralized approach improve the quality of work, but it also helps to connect your business. As remote working turns from a trend to the norm and offices expand overseas, it’s imperative that all employees are connected in order to ensure productivity. A single point of access through a centralized system allows processes to be completed no matter where your colleagues are based.  

Digitizing the peer review process not only makes it easy to internally regulate, but also allows underwriters to scrutinize policies in greater detail. This thorough approach to the process using automated internal and external audit saves time, money and resources.   

 

If you want to take a compliance-first approach to your peer review process, you can find out more about how your peers are mitigating risk in our global research report, ‘Make Your Breakthrough in Governance and Compliance’