Imagine being the only working cashier at a grocery store and watching the line of customers grow faster than you can check them out. You try to scan items more quickly as the customers become increasingly agitated. Then, in your haste, you miss a few items and have to start over – the whole line groans with collective exasperation.
That kind of experience isn’t scalable, and if customers eventually decide not to wait in line, the grocery store’s bottom line takes a hit.
According to McKinsey, insurers that provide superior customer experiences see up to 65% more in total returns than their peers. Automating submission intake can streamline the underwriting process and improve the experience for agents, underwriters, intake staff, and customers.
Understanding the challenges of submission intake
Before new insurance customers can “check out” with their issued policies, underwriters analyze information acquired during submission to conduct a risk assessment and determine the monthly premium. However, no matter how skilled your underwriters are, this process can only begin once data is ingested and passed to the policy administration system.
Think back to the lone cashier checking out a store full of customers. When insurance submission processing relies heavily on manual data entry, it becomes more time consuming, and the probability of making mistakes — like failing to scan an item — increases. This drain on resources leads to both scalability and data quality issues.
How Guidewire is automating submission intake
Guidewire Submission Intake streamlines data ingestion to drive underwriting efficiency, profitability, and accuracy through its cloud-based infrastructure, its seamless integration with PolicyCenter, and its user-friendly tools.
Cloud-based infrastructure: As a Guidewire Cloud Platform microservice, Submission Intake has regular, automatic updates, ensuring that Guidewire customers always have access to the latest features and tools.
Integration with PolicyCenter: Submission Intake automatically extracts applicant information from most standard commercial lines ACORD forms and flags any errors or inconsistencies in the validation interface before passing the data into PolicyCenter. This process prevents data accuracy issues, which can cause delays in underwriting and, ultimately, policy issuance.
User-friendly tools: Elements of Submission Intake are enhanced in the Jasper release to improve user experience and promote ease of doing business. The most notable enhancements are the ability to assign underwriters to submissions, improve document error handling, and the new Schedule Import feature. Agents and intake staff can use the Schedule Import feature to upload spreadsheets of vehicle and driver information without needing to reformat. The flexible import wizard will automatically map data to the relevant fields in PolicyCenter.
Furthermore, the user interface is a Jutro micro-frontend that can be embedded in any agent experience, such as Guidewire ProducerEngage, to provide ease of doing business.
The customer experience
Submission Intake became Generally Available in Guidewire’s Flaine release. CopperPoint Insurance Companies (CopperPoint), a Guidewire customer since 2012, began using Submission Intake when they migrated from an on-premise environment to Guidewire Cloud. According to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Brad Lontz, CopperPoint has seen “a 20% average increase in utilization of the ACORD Submission Intake process on a year-over-year basis.”
CopperPoint plans to use other cloud-based services, such as Guidewire Advanced Product Designer, to rapidly launch and update products, in conjunction with Submission Intake to drive its digital transformation.
Final thoughts – the future of submission intake
Guidewire recognizes that seamless submission entry is critical to maintaining strong relationships with agents and customers. Potential future enhancements to Submission Intake could include:
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Supporting Statement of Values (locations and buildings) in Schedule Import
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Automating the Schedule Import process
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Expanding Submission Intake to support custom and non-U.S. forms, automating the submission process for insurers who write business internationally.
To learn more about the capabilities of Submission Intake, view our data sheet or contact your Customer Success Manager.
For more information, please our dedicated Jasper website, press release, and release highlights.