The past two decades have seen numerous technological advancements that few predicted but significantly impacted society. They include:
- The rise of smartphones: While mobile phones existed before the iPhone, the widespread adoption and impact of smartphones were largely unforeseen. They revolutionized communication, entertainment, and commerce.
- E-commerce: Few predicted the growth of online shopping and e-commerce platforms like Amazon. It disrupted traditional retail and transformed consumer behavior.
- Streaming services: The popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Spotify was unexpected, as they disrupted the traditional cable TV and music industries.
- Cloud computing: The shift from on-premises data centers to cloud-based services was a significant change many didn’t anticipate.
Though voluntary benefits billing will likely not see the massive societal disruption we’ve experienced in the past two decades, emerging trends and innovations offer insurers opportunities for improvement and growth. Here’s what the future of voluntary benefits billing could include:
Outsourced Billing Platforms
Many companies have historically internally developed their software applications to meet specific needs. For example, it wasn’t uncommon for large organizations to build their in-house platforms to manage their human resource data. Solutions like Workday or ADP offered more robust functionality without the maintenance overhead. As a result, few organizations have their own internal HR database today.
The same will happen to voluntary insurance billing. It’s not uncommon for voluntary insurers to maintain internally developed billing applications. However, as technology evolves and the costs of in-house development rise, many organizations are turning to vendor-provided billing solutions.
Voluntary insurance premiums are typically much smaller than health insurance premiums. As a result, voluntary insurers are more sensitive to billing costs. Maintaining software – the people and infrastructure – can be expensive. Outsourcing to a vendor can drive down those maintenance costs while also often offering more functionality. Plus, modern premium billing software has tools that can reduce or eliminate manual tasks that limit staff productivity.
Artificial Intelligence that Improves Accuracy
Accurate premium billing relies on accurate data. Data exchanges between insurers and employers and poor data management practices lead to inaccurate billing that requires staff time to fix. That staff time eats into profits.
The advent of artificial intelligence should help smooth those rough edges. For example, billing vendors like Certifi can leverage artificial intelligence to find data anomalies that might otherwise lead to a billing error. That may include a termination date before a start date or an accidental termination of an entire employer’s location that AI can identify – and correct – before it results in a billing error.
Easier Self-Administration
For some products, voluntary insurers don’t generate the bill. Instead, employers provide the number of employees enrolled in each product to retrieve a bill based on product rates. This self-bill eliminates billing administration for the insurer but places more responsibility on the employer.
Progressive voluntary benefits insurers are streamlining the self-bill process to make the process of reporting billing-related data to employers. Leveraging internet portals with a well-defined workflow enables insurers to capture all the data necessary to calculate the invoice. By streamlining the process, insurers can deliver a better customer experience, improving retention while ensuring the proper data elements.
Accounting-based Design
Most voluntary benefit billing systems leverage a list bill design. That means they bill based on who is active at a specific time. That’s OK, but list bill systems can require manual work should a correction or adjustment occur. Those manual actions waste time and lead to even more billing errors.
Accounting-based systems can automatically create adjustments based on timelined data and a robust set of billing rules. Did you bill for a terminated employee? No problem, just input the correct termination date and the system will use accounting principles and automatically adjust a future bill.
Tightly Integrated Point Solutions
Insurers frequently lament an overload of point solutions. Trying to connect data from disparate systems has been a chore. As a result, vendors have built core administration solutions with broader functionality. Unfortunately, managing claims data is much different than billing, which leads to limited billing solutions bundled with other core admin functionality, like claims administration.
As integration technology has improved, point solutions will more readily integrate. Those tightly integrated solutions will be connected quickly and easily, enabling better business insight, a better customer experience, fewer errors, and automated processes. The rise of tightly integrated point solutions could be in the future of voluntary benefits billing.
Certifi’s premium billing and payment solutions help voluntary insurers automate billing and payment processes to reduce administrative costs.
