Technology may have simplified insurance in many ways in recent decades, but some outdated elements of the industry still endure. A salient example of this is the industry’s reliance on paperwork. Paperwork is not only expensive to produce, but it is also time-consuming to handle, difficult to store and keep secure, and has a significant carbon footprint.
Many insurers recognize this but are at a loss as to how to remedy it. One solution is to use specialized optical character recognition (OCR) software to automatically digitize the data from documents.
In this article, we’ll examine some of the most transformative use cases of OCR, especially AI-based OCR, for the insurance industry.
What is OCR for insurance?
All OCR software functions in a similar way, regardless of the industry it is used in. Essentially, OCR scans documents, recognizes text-based information, then transfers it into a digital format. OCR for insurance is no different, just used in the context of insurance-related work. For example, it may mean processing claims documents or anything else used as part of day-to-day insurance operations.
Unfortunately, basic OCR is often limited in the ways it can be used by insurers. For one thing, primitive OCR cannot effectively recognize a particularly large range of documents. This can become especially apparent when handling complex document types. In these cases, accuracy rates can drop to unacceptable levels, or you may even struggle with total incompatibility.
AI-based OCR can overcome these issues, with its enhanced functionality and ability to recognize a wider range of document types. This makes it significantly more useful for insurers, who need to deal with a diverse range of documents on a daily basis.
Potential use cases for OCR in insurance
Streamlining the customer experience
A huge part of attracting customers to your business and retaining them is ensuring you provide a smooth, reliable customer experience. OCR can help you to achieve this by simplifying and speeding up many tasks associated with customers that involve paperwork, automating the digitization of data for a more seamless customer experience.
By optimizing key processes using OCR, insurers can offer a more streamlined, competitive, and customer-friendly experience.
Boosting accuracy rates
An almost unavoidable problem with most forms of data digitization is the occurrence of errors. In any situation, errors are undesirable, but they can be seriously damaging for insurers. If, for example, a customer is quoted the wrong price, it could ruin the customer relationship or negate any profits.
Unfortunately, there will almost always be relatively high error rates when relying on manual data transfer, as human error is always going to happen. Additionally, simple forms of OCR are also likely to produce higher-than-optimal error rates. AI-based OCR, however, is generally far more accurate, making it an important part of any insurer’s efforts to boost accuracy rates.
Onboarding customers
Customer onboarding is another critical part of running an insurance business, and it’s important to get it right. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, the speed and reliability at which you can onboard customers also matter greatly. However, manual data entry and primitive OCR can be slow and error-prone, making them a less-than-ideal option for the onboarding process.
OCR powered by AI can therefore be an excellent way of improving the onboarding procedure. It can help your business intake and process crucial customer details faster, saving you time and getting customers up and running more rapidly.
Automating administration
OCR is an automation tool, so it’s an obvious choice for any business trying to automate parts of its administrative processes. Cutting out the need for excessive human intervention in basic data handling processes can save you time, effort, and money. These resources can then be allocated elsewhere to benefit the business, and you can also benefit from smoother overall workflows and administrative efficiency.
Improving data organization and security
There are a huge number of benefits to moving away from paper-based storage to digital, not least the fact it is easier to organize and keep secure. Therefore, AI-powered OCR can be used by insurers to benefit their data organization and security strategies by speeding up the accurate digitization of data.
How can Digitise.AI transform the way you deal with data?
The Digitise.AI platform uses cutting-edge AI to digitize data from physical documents used by insurance companies, such as claims-related documents, invoices, and more.
For total compatibility and seamless functionality, our experts can pre-train the algorithms powering Digitise.AI to reliably understand any document format and digitize the necessary information with exceptional accuracy.
Digitise.AI helps insurers speed up document digitization and streamline employee workflows, all with higher accuracy rates than the average manual data transfer. Speak with our experts today to schedule a demo and see Digitise.AI in action.