Case Study
Intelligent claims automation that delivered 250% cost savings
OUR CLIENT
Our client is one of the world’s most established claims management companies, founded nearly a century ago and serves in the global risk management and insurance industries with technology-based solutions. With approximately 10,000 employees, operations in more than 50 countries, and over $1 billion in annual revenue, the company sits at the intersection of insurance scale and operational complexity.
THE CHALLENGE
A 1990s claims system processing 200,000 annual claims with no automation, no mobile access, and no path to profitability
The acquired claims application was the central system for the entire portfolio. It processed significant volume but had been built for a different era, one where manual adjuster effort was the default, batch processing was acceptable, and mobile field operations didn’t exist. By the time UST was engaged, the system had become a constraint on every dimension of the business.
- The legacy architecture could not scale with growing claim volumes, creating processing bottlenecks that increased settlement delays, operational costs, and reliance on manual work.
- Manual processes drove excessive operational costs. Back-office staff and field adjusters spent the majority of their time on tasks that should have been automated.
- No mobile access left field agents unable to manage claims in real time, slowing response times and increasing coordination overhead.
- Batch processing meant claims were logged but could not be actioned immediately — creating delays across the entire settlement cycle.
- Administrators could not configure business rules to match market changes, resulting in manual workarounds instead of intelligent decisioning.
- Minimal exception detection meant critical issues were identified late, increasing escalation costs and resolution time.
The business needed a replacement — not an upgrade. The mandate was a greenfield intelligent claims platform delivered as a minimum viable product within three months, with the scalability to handle growth and the intelligence to reduce manual intervention at every step.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Intelligent claims automation and cloud-native automation built for high-volume, low-value claims
UST replaced the legacy system entirely — delivering a greenfield claims platform on Microsoft Azure that introduced intelligent automation, real-time processing, and rules-based at every stage of the claims lifecycle. The architecture was built for scale from the start: cloud-native, API-driven, and designed to handle volume growth without performance degradation.
Intelligent workflow orchestration. UST introduced automated decisioning across the most repetitive, high-volume claims activities: generating and dispatching customer correspondence at 30, 60, and 90-day SLA intervals; closing abandoned claims without manual review; following up on missing documentation automatically; and prioritizing claims queues dynamically based on business-defined urgency rules.
No-touch claims processing. For routine, low-complexity claims, the platform automatically evaluates predefined business conditions routes claims appropriately and closes eligible cases without adjuster involvement - a capability that immediately reduced labor cost and allowed the adjusted team to focus on cases that actually required human judgment.
Real-time cloud processing on Azure. Batch processing was eliminated. Claims enter the system and are immediately actionable. Azure’s native services — search, caching, queuing — were leveraged to accelerate development and deliver enterprise-grade performance from day one.
Mobile-first field operations. Field agents and adjusters gained real-time access to the claims platform from any device, anywhere. The shift from desktop-only to mobile-enabled operations directly improved field productivity and reduced coordination delays.
Administrative intelligence and configurability. UST delivered an administrative portal that allowed IT and operations teams to adjust business rules and workflow logic without engineering intervention — enabling the platform to adapt continuously as market conditions and regulatory requirements evolved.
The MVP was delivered within the three-month mandate, replacing a decades-old claims platform on schedule while establishing a foundation for continuous enhancement and future AI-enabled capabilities. UST then extended beyond the initial scope — adding manual intervention pathways for complex cases, enhanced exception handling, and a continuous integration pipeline that allowed the team to detect and resolve issues through automated builds, minimizing production risk and accelerating iteration.
THE IMPACT
80% faster. 250% more efficient. 15% of claims closed without a single adjuster touchpoint.
The transformation delivered outcomes across every dimension that had made the legacy system a liability. Settlement time dropped from two and a half hours to 30 minutes per claim — an 80% improvement that compounded across 200,000+ annual claims. The 250% cost savings reflect not just efficiency gains but a structural shift: the platform now handles significantly higher claim volumes without requiring proportional headcount growth.
The 15% no-touch claim resolution rate is the clearest signal of intelligent automation working as designed. Routine claims are identified, processed, and closed by the system. Adjusters handle complexity. The economics of the portfolio — high volume, low value — finally work.
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