Medical Acceptance
How Monuta acquired more customers, increased customer satisfaction and gained new market opportunities with Avola Decision
More efficient handling of claims as an objective
When consumers look for funeral insurance, they want to know right away whether they can take out a policy or not. Until previously, the processing time of an application could take up to two weeks. Thanks to Avola Decision, customers at Monuta now know immediately whether or not they qualify for insurance and what the premium amount will be. Avola Decision also offers Monuta the scalability to easily enter the German market in the future.
- Consistent approach to new customers
Through fully automated decision-making. - Higher customer satisfaction
Potential customers now know immediately how and at what premium they can be insured. - Acceptance time reduced to a few minutes
Through decisions made in real time. - Reduction in underwriting fees by 10%
Only a quarter of new clients have yet to be screened.
Accept new applicants faster and stop inconsistency
Monuta is a funeral home. It also allows consumers to purchase funeral insurance. The company is one of the largest in the Netherlands in this sector. The medical risk underwriting process was the core challenge for Monuta. Each insurance company has a specific set of rules to determine whether a new application is accepted or not. There are also complex rules to determine the premium to be paid. Each person has a different risk profile due to the combination of factors such as age, gender and any conditions, which may also change. These rules are written down in procedures and taught to employees, who then interpret them to make decisions.
Hans van Gerrevink is innovation manager at Monuta and responsible for implementing the new risk acceptance model. “Six years ago, we decided to optimize the underwriting process for new customers,” says Van Gerrevink. “Our clients do not easily talk about their medical history. It is also difficult for us to assess individual cases. Previously, we used all kinds of external factors and scientists to calculate the probability of death within a certain period of time. Then we looked at how much premium to pay in return. That sounds complicated, and it was. Sometimes a family member had to wait for an acceptance result, while the rest of his family was accepted immediately. We wanted to change that.”
“Because multiple employees had to interpret these rules and make the decisions, this approach was also very labor intensive. We had a team of different medical underwriters to make and define the medical decisions for underwriting. The average turnaround time for an application with potential insureds with medical problems and the provision of an offer to the applicant was two weeks. A period when the potential customer could also research prices at other insurers.”
The interpretation required by the decision-making process caused several problems. Some decisions were inconsistent. Two employees could receive the same medical information and still come to a slightly different conclusion. A consistent approach is necessary and better to ensure fair treatment of applicants.
Implementing a 100% straight-through solution
Monuta therefore needed a direct translation of company rules and legislation. This can be accomplished by putting all rules and policies into a rule engine and using Avola Decision to automate decision making. Now when someone applies for insurance, they get an answer within milliseconds as to whether or not the insurance company will accept them. Avola Decision’s results provide the right input to directly calculate the premium to be paid. Risk assessment is based on a comprehensive set of rules related to medical issues.
Hans van Gerrevink: “We first set up the medical underwriting model with our partner Acumen, a consulting firm. What questions did we need to ask, what did we want to know and not know from potential customers? What are the risks of certain diseases? After a long search, the Avola Decision Platform turned out to be the flexible partner for us to model these variables in a rule engine.”
“The 24-hour availability of the rule engine is critical for us,” he said. It is an indispensable sales tool for us. If it doesn’t work, sales stagnate. Fortunately, we never had a breakdown. Implementing this solution took the company – after thorough preparation – six weeks and provided Monuta with a quick and user-friendly way to make these decisions.
What is Avola Decision?
Consistent approach, higher satisfaction, acceptance time from weeks to minutes, and 10% lower costs
That decision-making is now fully automated. With the push of a button, a decision is made whether an applicant will be medically accepted or rejected. This new approach is much simpler. Monuta saved several FTEs – and decisions are now made in real time. This allowed for clear and consistent decision-making because personal interpretation was eliminated and subjectivity was now avoided.
Customer satisfaction at Monuta has improved significantly. Potential customers now know immediately how and at what premium they can be insured. “About a quarter of potential new customers need further investigation,” he says. “A significant group that we can now help much faster because the rest are automatically accepted or not,” Van Gerrevink says. All of this has resulted in an increase in sales because potential customers get the offer for their insurance directly and thus no longer choose the competitor.
Monuta now uses the same decision logic for four different front-end systems, which only need to be updated once if a change needs to occur. The company just finished migrating to Avola’s enhanced cloud solution, which gives it more business process evaluation capabilities.
The cooperation with Avola enables Monuta to tap into other markets as well. Germany has a different insurance market and customer perception than the Netherlands, but Avola Decision is going to help the company overcome those barriers. Van Gerrevink: “In Germany, people are used to taking out life insurance without answering medical questions. As a result, every customer pays a higher premium and has a waiting period. Therefore, in Germany it is almost standard not to be insured for the first three years. We want to change that. Through our model, we can establish medical underwriting in five questions. With this we hope to conquer and change the German market.”
Automating decision-making also allows Monuta to simulate changes in policy underwriting. What would happen to the conclusion of the decisions if they made certain changes in the rules and policies? What would be the effect on applicants? How sensitive is a particular rule? All these questions can now be answered by simulating scenarios in Avola Decision. “We are very pleased that we can now give 100% of our potential customers a satisfactory response.”
Related:
- Consistent approach to new customers
Through fully automated decision-making. - Higher customer satisfaction
Potential customers now know immediately how and at what premium they can be insured. - Acceptance time reduced to a few minutes
Through decisions made in real time. - Reduction in underwriting fees by 10%
Only a quarter of new clients have yet to be screened.
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