Can Test Automation Boost Innovation for Insurance Sector?

Deloitte in its report on Insurance industry outlook has deliberated on how the Insurance sector is facing significant disruption and how the traditional business models can pose a challenge to the industry. Is the insurance sector lagging in a socio-economic scenario that demands more alertness and personalized attention? Can technology and IT innovation determine the change and boost growth?

Financial crisis and digital transformation are posing innumerable challenges as well as opportunities for the industry, where the unanswered question prevails; is the insurance sector geared up for the changed circumstances?

The challenge starts with the basic value proposition the industry brings, where the insurers are constantly questioned about satisfying customer expectations and personalizing products and services. There is a constant need to build a more connected world, handle macro-shifts in the economy and dismantle the legacy traditional models.

From 2016 to 2020, the insurance sector is expected to face some major wrath on five fronts. These trends are pertaining to a strong interface of human-technology capabilities.

• Mobility services
• Integrated communication systems
• On-demand financial assistance
• Digital Transformation
• Connected devices

Deloitte, in its report mentions, “We believe the industry’s hesitance to take bolder, faster steps toward transformation may be the result of reliance on a series of what we call “orthodoxies”— core presumptions about the strength and uniqueness of an insurer’s traditional value proposition and business models.”

So, in this context, disruption is not a single event, but a constant chain of events for the carriers. The efforts to determine and handle these challenges have to be consistent for further generating growth opportunities. There is a constant need for innovation, experimentation, and increasing adaption of evolving technologies to bring efficiency and attend to consumer expectations for personalized attention.

Overall, speed is at the core of everything. Pending cases, resolving claims on time are an eternal concern for all carriers. They don’t have enough time to transform their operations, workflows, policies, and people. Everything has to be done without disrupting the ongoing schedules.

Moreover, there is a dictate to comply with the federal rules for the insurance industry and then also work towards inventive ventures to lure the right target group.

The age of monopoly has gone. Today, insurers do not hold any monopoly on pricing and limiting risks. So, in order to become a disrupter, the carriers look at the digital platform to reach their customers and bring value to the business.

Volumes of data is generated across segments, and the need to make this data accessible is important. Telematics, IoT technologies, and Artificial Intelligence are enabling carriers to transform and get value from the data sources. There is a need to store this data into various forms and make it accessible, usable, and implement it when needed.

The underlying fact is that technology will bring innovation and boost the growth for the insurance sector. However, to bring about innovation, the industry will have to go through a lot of trials and testing to reconfirm that the implemented applications are able to meet the objectives.

For instance, Artificial Intelligence/Robotics/Drone technology can be used for the surveillance of an accident spot, but how the information gets fed and then uploaded and downloaded has to be tested effectively for the required outcome.

Even if you delete the human factor from the process, insurance as a domain still demands sensitivity and personalization. How do you ensure that?

With technology boosting the sector, testing has become more of an ongoing need than a one-time affair towards the end of the SDLC process. As mentioned earlier, insurance being a data-sensitive, life-sensitive, and time-sensitive sector, there is no time to go back and evaluate. It has to be now or never!

Testing has to be recurring with no scope for manual errors. Automation is the only way out. Test Automation with a comprehensive framework of scripts will boost speed and bring quality. Technology and processes that would enable the customers, forms the core of every carrier’s business objectives.

Every customer-centric application needs to enable processes and resolve issues to bring combined efficiency. Test automation brings its intrinsic benefits for the sector in its own way.

Mentioned below are some key benefits that Test Automation brings for the sector.

• Consistency: Constant testing is required for ensuring the functionality of the applications during various scenarios and under varied pressures. This consistency is possible with an automated framework that will keep up with the recurrence of the tests and avoids manual errors. It further saves time and efforts, speeding up the overall process.

• Reusability: It is by far the key benefit of Test Automation, as it boosts profitability across the product lifecycle. The framework makes tests reusable, and with every new test or discovery of bug the test directory gets upgraded and resilient for market needs. Additionally, it minimizes the costs and helps justify investment in the testing tools.

• Durability: Test Automation helps support further testing tasks, as the framework gets upgraded with every test and bug. Automated testing is specifically structured to provide flexibility, by complying with the latest security and testing protocols. This makes the overall process and framework resourceful over a longer span, further boosting the profitability factor and optimizing the benefits from the testing tools.

• Emulates environment: Test Automation distinctly simulates a typical user environment for testing across scenarios and with various components. For instance, automated testing can come handy during tricky and tedious testing for Graphic User Interface (GUI). It helps mock user driven aspects and scenarios to further check real-time issues and pressures.

Consistent results and constant testing with minimal human intervention is bound to bring efficiency for the application. Insurance apps need repetition of similar processes and churning of similar data over and over, which needs a lot of Performance testing and Functional testing to bring efficiency and identify defects.

Test Automation tools bring down testing efforts massively, and make enough room to innovate and add customer-centric features.

Our take

Amongst its various challenging projects, Cigniti team got handpicked by USA’s largest Dental Insurance provider particularly for its Test Automation expertise and proven thought leadership in testing Salesforce for the Insurance sector.

The Client approached Cigniti for expert software testing services required for their Next Generation Marketing, Sales, and Enrolment platform. With the size they had grown into over a span of 50 years, there was a serious requirement to launch products faster and also ensure quality.

They reached out to Cigniti for Functional testing, Regression, Integration, and System testing in both Manual and Automation modes.

The project was challenging, mainly due to lack of standardized QA processes, unplanned tool usage and under-utilization of best practices. Cigniti team developed a comprehensive test strategy to support QA for all platforms – Pega, Salesforce, and other integrated systems.

With proficiency in Selenium Automation and Continuous integration of automation suites, Cigniti team was able to achieve improved visibility of the test coverage and almost 50% reduction in test efforts. This was a phenomenal achievement for the Client to further innovate and reach faster to the market.

In this digital age, it is also important to understand what technology brings for the sector? Or what are the areas of technology transformation that the industry can foresee and where they can anticipate growth.

Artificial Intelligence and IoT is expected to be a game changer for the sector. It will help personalize services and speed up the claim generation and resolution process.

Cigniti has been a front runner and chosen partner for Test Automation and Selenium Automation. Our Migration platform Migrate2Selenium helps you seamlessly migrate to multiple Commercial Off-the-Shelf tools. It is a version independent Accelerator that can migrate any version of test assets from QTP/UFT to Selenium.

Connect with us to get the most from your investment in Test Automation tools and build a consumer interface that is more responsive and adds value to your business objectives.