Originally founded in Switzerland in 1872, Zurich Insurance Group has become one of world’s best known and most established insurers. 

Today, they operate in 215 countries with a staff of 55,000. While heritage and scale are good things for an insurer to have, for Zurich UK, they were presenting challenges with legacy processes and operational complexity. The business needed to align its teams and increase its focus on customer experience. And they did, with help from intelligent automation.

Challenge

Say the name, Zurich, and people think insurance. With an established presence in 215 countries, it’s a global household name. While there are many benefits of operating at this scale, Zurich UK found itself wrestling with some significant challenges. Inefficiencies in processes and delivery across the entire organization were impacting its ability to serve customers well. In some instances, teams within the same operational units were not even aligned. This was leading to resource competition and a misalignment of goals, which resulted in a slowdown in operational delivery. 

Solution

Zurich UK earmarked intelligent automation as a possible way to bridge process gaps and boost efficiency. But the company’s approach to implementing the technology is what has helped make it such a success. First, they aligned their separate teams, giving them shared purpose. Lastly, they invested in significant upskilling and retraining of staff. Helping staff understand and own the changes increased their acceptance. Guided by this, Zurich UK turned to Blue Prism to deploy its digital workforce. Today, 55 Blue Prism digital workers manage over 120 processes for the insurer. These digital workers have assisted with a rapid notification portal, built during the pandemic to allow customers to report claims quickly. As part of an electronic payments’ initiative, digital workers have enabled Zurich to pay customer claims faster and more efficiently. And Blue Prism, in combination with ABBYY FlexiCapture, is enabling Zurich to rapidly assess incoming documents to remove the pain from front line staff. In each case digital workers have contributed to an enhanced digital customer experience.

In total, the digital workforce has processed three million transactions, freeing up Zurich UK’s frontline human workers to focus on providing outstanding customer service.