1. Enhancing Workflow Automation in Insurance Underwriting Processes with Web Services and Alerts Dickson K. W. CHIU Senior Member, IEEE Dickson Computer Systems Hong Kong kwchiu@acm.org, dicksonchiu@ieee.org Raymond C.M. Lee Kai Pan Mark Dept. of Computing Hong Kong Polytechnic University 04739356g@polyu.edu.hk csmarkkp@comp.polyu.edu.hk

2. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 2 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

3. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 3 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

4. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 4 Typical Flow of Underwriting Operations

5. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 5 Use case diagram for underwriting processes

6. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 6 Typical underwriting processes automation in oversea countries

7. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 7 System Architecture of AUS

8. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 8 Sample Request SOAP Message from external party

9. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 9 Sample Response SOAP Message to external party

10. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 10 Example Scenario

11. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 11 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

12. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 12 XML with no encryption

13. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 13 Encrypted XML

14. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 14 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 ...

15. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 15 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

16. UnderwritingHICSS40 - 16 Question and Answer Thank you! Contact: dicksonchiu@ieee.org