Enhancing Workflow Automation in Insurance Underwriting Processes with Web Services and Alerts Dickson K. W. CHIU Senior Member, IEEE Dickson Computer Systems Hong Kong Raymond C.M. Lee Kai Pan Mark Dept. of Computing Hong Kong Polytechnic University

UnderwritingHICSS Introduction Underwriting – risk assessment activities in insurance companies. Many operation activities happen before case is routed to underwriter, e.g., Scanning of documents Indexing & QC Transfer module Import robot and workflow engine… Workflow automation usually integrated with operational flow Human and machine process integration Overall process monitoring and exception handling

UnderwritingHICSS Approach to existing problems Many unexpected problems/events could happen but not handled by existing automation facility For example : Image quality of scanned document is unacceptable The integrity of document batch uploaded to file server is invalid Human communication delay among parties Alert-enhanced Underwriting System (AUS) can be used to address these problems

UnderwritingHICSS Typical Flow of Underwriting Operations

UnderwritingHICSS Use case diagram for underwriting processes

UnderwritingHICSS Typical underwriting processes automation in oversea countries

UnderwritingHICSS System Architecture of AUS

UnderwritingHICSS Sample Request SOAP Message from external party

UnderwritingHICSS Sample Response SOAP Message to external party

UnderwritingHICSS Example Scenario

UnderwritingHICSS Web Service Security Why need to secure communication? XML/SOAP message is sent in clear text Sensitive data may be revealed to unauthorized parties What can be done in protecting data? WS-Security XML Encryption XML Signature

UnderwritingHICSS XML with no encryption

UnderwritingHICSS Encrypted XML

UnderwritingHICSS Summary  Tangible benefits  Turnaround time shortened, e.g., to rescan document  Maintain data integrity  Help monitoring and decrease time to diagnose problematic cases  Staff performance measure from AMS log  …  Some Intangible benefits  Shorten the entire processing time  Process reliability  Improve customer satisfaction ...

UnderwritingHICSS Future Work  Questionnaires to collect user feedback  Plan for the extension of AUS platform such that those processes in which exception events are raised are automated resumed  Other unexpected exceptions and events  Artificial intelligence in handling the exception events  Agent-based assistance to internal staff and external users  Empirical measurements of the improvement of staff performance and customer satisfaction

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