When a loved one passes away, their family often depends on life insurance support to provide a financial safety net. And when beneficiaries file this type of claim, they hope for an easy and efficient claims process. That's why Tim Quick, Head of Global Life & Health (L&H) Claims Solutions, and his team developed a range of automated solutions that improve the overall claims experience.

"As new digital processes were transforming the insurance industry, we realised that claims digitisation and automation technologies could improve the L&H claims process," notes Tim. "We saw an opportunity to help our Life & Health clients improve their customer experience and streamline their business."

Combining a passion for technology with the desire to make the claims process smoother, Tim and his team have developed modular, automated solutions that support beneficiaries, living policyholders and claims examiners. Swiss Re's Automated Customer Experience (ACE) portal facilitates the claims process for claimants by offering automated assistance to register a loss, provide claim requirements and receive real-time status reporting. Users can log their claim via the ACE portal, where they are guided through the process step by step – while requirement gathering and follow-up communications previously took weeks, with ACE it now takes minutes.

"We wanted to make this process more efficient while still capturing the data needed for accurate assessments. So we used technology originally developed for automated underwriting and applied it to claims," Tim explains. The result? A rules-based automated assessment tool.

Once the claim is registered in ACE, Swiss Re's Claims Automated Rules Engine (CARE) takes over. CARE provides examiners with automated risk assessments, sorts and prioritises by risk, and provides guidance on final adjudication decisions. "CARE enables insurers to save time and resources by automating claims assessments," Tim says.

To further improve these tools, Swiss Re also partnered with software services providers in 2023 to integrate its claims automation solutions with policy administration and standalone claims workbench systems to enable end-to-end automation for efficient claims administration. With Swiss Re's modular claims solutions, ecosystem partnerships and cloud-based integration capabilities, the claims process has transformed into a fully digital experience regardless of the insurer's core technology. With ACE and CARE integrated into an insurer's core systems, the entire claimant experience from the customer's first input notifying the insurer of their loss to when the claims expert assesses the claim remains one all-digital and integrated experience.

"With our claims-related suite of services, we can reduce the claims process from weeks to days – and in some cases even minutes," Tim notes. "It’s gratifying to see how new technology can improve this process and can be applied to help people during a sensitive and difficult time."