Transforming Insurance A/R Operations with Truly Integrated Receivables Solutions

 If you’re an insurance company, your customers probably want to do everything online, from making claims to paying bills. Like the banking and healthcare industries, today’s insurance providers find themselves providing their customers with a bevy of different payment methods and channels—everything from ACH and pay by phone to online and mobile solutions.

Chances are, that’s created a problem for you—a set of silos where your nice, rationalized receivables operations should be. The growing technical complexity is costly and inefficient, and hard to visualize—which makes it hard to use your receivables data to make good business decisions. Instead, you’re forced to manage a crazy quilt of different systems and platforms just to piece together a working view of all the moving parts of your company’s financial engine.

It’s time to eliminate those silos—and it’s not as hard as it may seem. Receivables processing technology has improved significantly in the last decade as cloud computing has matured. In our ebook, “Making True Integrated Receivables a Reality for Insurance Providers,” we explore the misperceptions and realities around moving to a consolidated platform, and offer you practical next steps to get started.

First, it’s critical to understand the difference between solutions offering dashboard views and a solution that actually integrates your receivables. A truly integrated receivables solution gives you the ability to accept any payment method (check, one-time or recurring ACH and credit card, cash) from any payment channel (mailed-in, lockbox, called-in, in-person, online, mobile, etc.) on a single platform that can accept, process and post payments in a single pass. That data is automatically delivered for posting into your company’s back office system, too—which means you don’t pay your employees to perform manual labor when they could be working on more strategic, value-added work.

Instead of spending time and capital building your own solution, using a proven integrated receivables platform can help you address your payment technology challenges—specifically the challenges of managing legacy, disparate, siloed solutions. That helps you reduce inefficiencies and lighten the load on your IT team, instead of asking them to be all things to all people. Truly integrated receivables platforms can be flexibly configured to your unique business needs, and because they’re cloud-based, you can continue to adapt them to your needs in the future. In fact, best-in-class insurance providers like Physicians Mutual, Mutual of Omaha, Rural Mutual and Assurity are already using integrated receivables platforms to streamline their receivables and expand their capabilities.

If you’re searching for a solution to streamline your A/R processing, look for a receivables processing partner who offers all the following features—all from a single, secure, SaaS platform:

• Low barrier to entry—Cloud-based solutions should free you from having to make big up-front investments, because you don’t have to buy any infrastructure
• Any payment method—Including check, single/recurring ACH, credit/debit card, cash
• Any payment channel—Mailed-in, lockbox, called-in, in-person, feed-based, online and mobile
• Straight-through processing—Accept, process, and post payments and associated remittance data in a single pass
• Advanced check and remittance processing—Flexibly scan single or multiple remittance documents (up to 8.5” x 11”) with each transaction
• Intelligent invoice matching—Complete electronic invoice/bill presentment and payment (EIPP/EBPP) capabilities across all interfaces
• Easily implemented, modular design—Convenient SaaS delivery to enable easy addition of new locations, payment methods and channels within clicks

If it’s time for your company to take a serious look at what a truly integrated receivables platform can do for your A/R operations, check out our new Insurance Industry ebook to learn how to consolidate your siloed receivables systems and operations onto a single, truly integrated platform.

Learn How Truly Integrated Receivables Solutions is Now a Reality for the Insurance Industry.        

Originally published June 8, 2017.