Abstract
Robotic process automation has a strong foothold in all industries globally, and its application in the insurance industry is forecasted to continue to grow over the next several years. It wasn’t that long ago that insures were using RPA for mostly non-complex tasks. This was due to several factors including many insurers just starting on their RPA journey and focusing on the simplest of task to automate while learning and adapting to the platform. Another factor is that RPA platform providers were pivoting to integrate cognitive capabilities into their respective platforms. In the early stages of organizations implementing RPA, they achieved many benefits including efficiencies in policy administration, billing, claims, and many other business functions. When initially implementing RPA, it was not unusual to see dramatic productivity increases, and significant person hours saved, depending on the breadth of automation opportunity.
After the intial implementation of RPA and after insuers have addressed the "low-lying-fruit" for process automation, many ask "what's next?", and the answer is: plenty! RPA platform and service providers have been heavily focused on extending RPA capabilities by integrating it with artificial intelligence and developing RPA-as-a-Service (RPAaas) capabilities in the cloud.
For this report Celent surveyed vendors that offer RPA platforms or services to see how RPA is evolving, with a focus on areas such as the integration with artifical intelligence, process intelligence tools and other advances in the RPA toolkit. We have learned that AI is a strategic must have in virtually every RPA platform or service providers playbook.