The Covid-19 Strike: The Impact on Insurance Industry & Ways to Mitigate Risk with AI
The outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) since December 2019 has been causing the entire world chaos and threatening human lives with the rapid transmission speed. The total number of confirmed cases have reached to more than 415,000 and nearly 18,500 of deaths based on World Health Organisation (WHO). Many countries had imposed lockdown to combat the spread and does it brings negative impacts to the Insurance industry?
Potential Impacts on Insurance Industry
Many of us might expect losses from canceled events, travel disruptions and potential medical claims for insurance industry due to the unprecedented number of infected cases and the lives that had been taken by Covid-19. However, the world’s largest insurers have learned lessons from previous epidemics such as SARS, MERS, Zika, and Ebola, to tightened up their policies by excluding infectious diseases to prevent potential losses. Thus, claim loss has a low impact to the insurance industry in short term. The potential impacts on insurance industry are listed and described as below:
- Potential government enforcement on insurance claims – If the pandemic disease is prolonged, government might impose special enforcement on insurance companies such as allowing certain infectious diseases claim to help on country’s economic. Insurance companies might require extra time and effort to investigate tons of incoming digital claims from preventing frauds and might encounter huge claim loses.
- Increase operational risks – Since most of the countries had imposed lockdown, the sales and operation process must be digitalised to keep the business running smoothly online. However, some of the insurance companies are still relies heavily on face to face interaction without advanced digital tools. Thus, it might be challenging for them to handle the heavy online interactions with customers and distributors and offsite work management for the employees which significantly reduce their operational efficiency and impact the customer satisfaction if no immediate action taken.
How Insurance Companies could Mitigate risk with AI
In times of uncertainty and financial stress, it is increasingly important for the insurance sector to maintain connections and be well-positioned to react to the pandemic situation in order to mitigate all potential risks. The powerful AI-powered digital tools are very essential for the insurance companies to perform productive planning, training, and outreach across company, intermediary, and client stakeholder groups. Here’re some of the methods that will be beneficial for the insurance sectors with AI:
1. Optimise Resources and Cost Efficiency with AI-powered Customer Services Process
The purpose of deploying an AI-powered chatbot is to understand and answer the bulk of customer or client queries over email, chat and phone calls. The pandemic outbreak caused obvious shift in consumer behaviour especially moving toward online instead of physical visit. Therefore, we can see a sudden increase in online queries which are exceeded the usual capacity with the available workforce. The typical ways of solving this problem are either hiring more live agents or deploying chatbot.
Hiring more live agents is the most direct way in solving the issue but it requires times to go through entire hiring process and you will never know how many live agents are enough to handle the increasing number of online interactions especially when unexpected dynamic event happen like global pandemic. Thus, AI-based chatbot is a better choice for organisations to handle heavy traffic of online interactions with immediate responses to the frequently asked questions that can significantly enhance customer experience by eliminating the waiting time for voice messages and it will only assign the online queries to live agent when required. This can effectively minimise the need of live agent while help the organisation to optimise human resources for more important tasks like innovation and in the meantime achieve cost efficiency.
2. Enhance Customer Experience & Coverage Personalisation
AI enables a seamless automated buying experience that can generate customers’ geographic and social data using chatbot that allow users to customise coverage for specific items and events. (Source from Emerj) This could efficiently shorten the buying process and improve quality of interactions to retain customer satisfaction while ultimately reduce operational risk.
3. Minimise Fraudulent Loss with Automated Fraud Detection System
A high accuracy fraud detection system is essential for the insurance sector during this moment to mitigate fraud risk. AI and machine learning help to enhance fraud detection accuracy, increase the detection rate of fraud activity by 30% and reduce 50% of false alarm that reduces the wastage of resource and time allocated for further investigation and most importantly to avoid unpleasant fraudulent loss.
4. Improve Claim Management with AI
A claim application for customers to apply claims which embedded with AI and ML can perform faster claim process compared to manual process. Ant Financial claims that the AI-powered claim system assesses to the accidents and handles claims 68 times faster than human claims adjusters based on a study from Towards Data Science. Since there is a potential of special government enforcement on releasing infectious claim for certain policies, an efficient and high accuracy claim system is extremely important for the insurance sector to reduce fraud while mitigating business risk.
A Crucial Moment for Insurance Industry to Adopt AI
Covid-19 might not cause direct negative impact on insurance sector in short term. However, there are still a lot of uncertainty that could affect the insurance sectors if the pandemic disease is prolonged or still out of controlled. Thus, precautions for all potential risks must be taken during this uncertainty period with a better long term planning and AI adoption is one of the most efficient method that helps organisations to optimise desired results.
Healthcare professionals grapple not only with the inherent challenges of their roles but also with a system that sometimes seems unprepared to support them. It’s more than a logistical hurdle; it directly impacts patient care and the well-being of those dedicated to the healthcare system. Recognising the profound effect of scheduling inefficiencies on the health and efficiency of our healthcare providers highlights the urgent need for a systemic solution.
Are the Schedulers the Unseen Catalysts of Burnout?
At the heart of the matter is the prevalent use of manual processes in many healthcare rostering and scheduling systems. Daily schedules involve intricate coordination with HR for medical leaves or staff changes, estimating the resources needed for patient arrivals, and more. It’s not just a headache for schedulers; it’s a widespread problem affecting the entire healthcare system. A study by the American Medical Association starkly illustrates this point, showing that healthcare professionals facing work overload are three times more likely to experience burnout.
Schedulers’ Nightmare: Navigating Sudden Changes
Imagine a medical practitioner is suddenly absent, and everything goes haywire. The meticulously planned schedule turns into an unsolvable puzzle, leaving a gap in the workforce. Here’s the problem: if this gap isn’t quickly filled, it means not enough resources for the remaining on-duty medical staff. Their workload skyrockets, stress levels hit the roof, and the environment becomes a breeding ground for potential mistakes. But these aren’t just little slip-ups; they have real consequences, impacting patient care and treatment quality. Lives are on the line, emphasizing the urgent need for practical solutions in scheduling and rostering.
4 Key Features for Seamless Healthcare Operations
Some forward-thinking hospitals are leveraging medical rostering and scheduling software to revolutionise their staffing processes. The question then becomes: how can hospitals choose software with features that genuinely make a difference? Let’s explore the four must-have features:
- Intelligent Automation for Swift Adaptability: Swiftly adapting to unforeseen changes, such as sudden staff absences, is pivotal. Intelligent automation ensures real-time adjustments, facilitating uninterrupted patient care while effortlessly optimising staff allocation. This feature seamlessly integrates with internal systems, updating in real-time or batch mode, providing valuable insights into staff availability during unexpected events.
2. Real-Time Visibility and Seamless Communication: Minimising scheduling delays and communication gaps is fundamental for operational efficiency. Real-time visibility features foster instant communication and updates, creating a fluid workflow that minimises disruptions. Integration with HR and other staffing systems enhances this by offering a comprehensive view of staff status, from medical leave to emergency situations, ensuring effective communication during sudden changes.
3. Customisable Workflows and Agile Adaptability with Genetic Algorithm: Tailoring scheduling solutions to fit unique hospital workflows is essential. A system supporting easy updates and integration fosters agile adaptability, enabling on-the-fly adjustments to staff information in response to sudden changes. This flexibility is augmented by applying Genetic Algorithms for optimal timetables based on available resources and configurable constraints. From a study of National Library of Medicine in 2021, a hybrid genetic algorithm approach in scheduling management could outperforms the current manual scheduling in both fatigue factor and time of providing time table.
Steps of the GA algorithm – Journal of Healthcare Engineering
- Visualising Staff Distribution for Enhanced Decision-Making: Visualisation tools provide a clear insight into staff distribution through aids like bar plots, fostering informed decision-making. This feature streamlines administrative processes and enhances overall patient care quality.
Visualisation example from KewMann AI Scheduling
Optimising Healthcare Rostering & Scheduling: Elevating Efficiency, Doubling Impact, and Ensuring Practitioners Well-Being
By embracing these features, the healthcare industry can collectively move towards a more resilient, patient-focused scheduling approach – minimising burnout, optimising resource allocation, and more patients to be cured. An Asia largest hospital has reduced more than 90% of scheduling time for healthcare schedulers, providing peace of mind while enhancing overall efficiency with KewMann. Embrace this harmonious evolution. It’s not just scheduling; it’s a prescription for a healthier, happier healthcare ecosystem.