Claims Management is an integral part of Insurance Industry. Most claim processing eventually ends with claim settlement that involves Insurance companies paying for a covered loss. Depending on a claim request, insurance companies may pay the Insured directly or arrange payments to a vendor. Any large insurance company usually has multiple vendors that send electronic invoices for payments. For example: In Europe, Elektronisk Handelsformat (EHF) is a standard supported format used for sending electronic invoices and credit memos. The requirements for invoices are based on PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 standard.
A European client, a large insurance provider, works with different vendors who provide risk evaluation services, risk management services and authorized service providers. As part of their transformation journey, EHF setup was required to be complete and integrated with Claims application. Due to the volume of vendors and invoices, the current process was time consuming with multiple validation workflows and service request pipeline setup based on applicable coverages. Each vendor was required to go through extensive testing to ensure proper functioning. A solution was desired that not only simplified the payment process but also provided a seamless way to onboard additional vendors.
Our team, with extensive industry experience, incorporated a framework to integrate EHF based invoicing with claims application. The solution involved building a new process in claims for vendor management. This provided a base to segregate invoices, link appropriate claims, service requests and process checks for payouts. The solution was streamlined to handle various service providers and eliminated the need to create different workflows for each vendor. This eased maintenance of claims application for new vendor onboarding with automated billing providing faster processing, increased accuracy and better customer experience. The time span of onboarding vendors which was initially one month, reduced to 1 week after the implementation of this framework leading to the insurance company benefiting from simplified and expedited vendor management and payment process.