Hyland RPA automates processes for Funeral Directors Life

Funeral Directors Life Insurance Company, a full-service insurance company specializing in pre-need services for funeral homes with $1.7 billion in assets, has implemented Hyland RPA to further automate claims and new business processes. As an existing Hyland customer leveraging the OnBase content services platform since 2017, the insurer was interested in incorporating robotic process automation into its content services and digital transformation strategies. The insurer took advantage of a free trial of the Hyland RPA solution, testing it out during the organization’s annual ‘Hack Week,’ where it investigated potential technology impacts and improvements for business.

Prior to implementing Hyland RPA, FDLC’s lean, eight-person new business processing team was responsible for closing more than 2,000 contracts per week. Often employees stayed past business hours to focus their efforts on finalizing contracts. Fortunately, the insurance company’s ‘Hack Week’ provided an opportunity for developers to assess new solutions to solve challenges. During the week, a lead developer put together a fully outlined proof-of-concept to automate new business processing, without adding headcount. Just a few weeks after presenting the strategy, FDLC added five bots, integrated with its OnBase platform, that automatically surfaced information to settle 95 percent of incoming contracts. Within an additional month, there was an 88 percent return on bot investments and total elimination of lag time in line-of-business processing because systems are updated continuously throughout the day rather than settling at the end of day.

“Before investing in RPA we were looking into hiring additional staff to assist in time-consuming, manual processes. Instead, now our bots are handling the highly repetitive tasks, giving employees the ability to focus their time and effort on more important, high-value work that increases customer experience and service,” said Kyle Swearingen, VP of development at FDLC.

As FDLC has grown its new business by more than 70 percent over the last four years up to a projected $350 million in 2021, the end-to-end automation solution has made a substantial impact by automating over 20,000 hours of manual processes to date. By the end of 2021, executives expect that bots will complete roughly 90 percent of new business contracts, settling more than 2,000 contracts a week with the same amount of staff.

“From process design through bot management, the Hyland RPA solution is intuitive and fun,” Swearingen said. “The integration between OnBase and Hyland RPA has helped us design the perfect new business system — there’s no way we could achieve the results we are today without both those assets.”

For more information on robotic process automation use cases for insurance, or the benefits of integrating RPA with content services, visit Hyland.com/RPA.

Contact 
Joel Hammond
Manager, External Relations
[email protected]