One Inc & Guidewire Expand Payments to Canadian P&C Market
When an industry transitions from manual labor to automation, the sector’s landscape changes forever. Take car manufacturing for example, where the assembly line revolutionized production by transforming arduous, error-prone tasks into precise and efficient processes at scale.
A similar revolution is gaining traction in the insurance industry’s financial operations. According to PwC, “The role of treasury continues to evolve into a more strategic, innovative, and data-driven partner that is critical to enterprise value creation.”1
Manual financial workflows undermine this momentum, sacrificing operational efficiency and creating expensive bottlenecks that divert resources from strategic initiatives. The statistics paint a clear picture, with 25% of premium dollars consumed by operating expenses2 per S&P Global, and 50% of large P&C insurers saying that optimized internal workflows is a top capability that they want IT to deliver in 2025, according to industry analyst Datos.3 Over 70% of midsize P&C insurers cited workflow optimization as a top capability for the year, making it No. 1 on its respective list of the Datos report.4
To help address these pressures and priorities, modern solutions with automated functionalities are improving treasury operations and increasing accuracy for insurers.
Just as early automobile assembly workshops struggled with inconsistencies and inefficiencies, manual reconciliation in insurance operations is bogged down by burdensome, fragmented workflows. For organizations processing thousands or tens of thousands daily transactions, even a small rate of error can lead to extensive remediation and mounting costs.
When insurance companies manage multiple premium trust accounts while reconciling complex payment flows, operational complexity escalates. The challenge intensifies with disparate workflows spanning multiple payment channels — online portals, call centers, agent/broker networks, mortgage lenders, and lockbox operations. Additionally, organizational silos compound these inefficiencies with premium payment teams typically operating independently from claims payment departments, each maintaining separate reconciliation processes and system protocols.
Staff must manually correlate bank activity across these fragmented channels, resolve discrepancies within disconnected systems, and ensure regulatory compliance across multiple operational frameworks. This setup resembles a poorly coordinated workshop where every employee follows a separate blueprint, leaving teams overworked and costs unnecessarily inflated.
The answer lies in an efficient, automated system within a single reconciliation environment. In the absence of automation, insurers will continue to face delays in financial reporting cycles and increased instances of inaccuracies that can dent both regulatory compliance and policyholder trust.
When Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line, it did more than increase speed. The innovation fundamentally redefined quality control and cost efficiency. Advanced treasury technology can have the same revolutionary effect on insurance’s financial operations.
More than 75% of CFOs say the current challenging market environment is increasing pressure on finance leaders to drive cost efficiencies and hit short-term earnings targets (EY).5 To that end, automated billing systems and bank account reconciliation help reduce manual labor expenses, with features like auto-matching able to save accountants hours of time and effort. According to McKinsey, benchmarking efficiency efforts provides the starting point for understanding the opportunity. Once that effort has been completed, introducing intelligent systems, such as robotic process automation to replace manual work, can achieve an impact of 20-50%.6
Automated systems allow insurers to process large transaction volumes with minimal intervention. Further, the possibilities for improved productivity rise significantly with AI’s emerging capabilities. McKinsey research sizes the long-term AI opportunity at $4.4 trillion in added productivity growth potential from corporate use cases.7 As tedious manual efforts are replaced by sleek, scalable automation, finance teams can redirect their focus to value-added tasks or strategic planning.
Accurate payment reconciliation serves as the cornerstone of maintaining policy integrity within insurance operations. The financial status of each policy directly determines the ability to fulfill the fundamental promise of insurance to policyholders. When payment applications fail, arrive late, or process in duplicate, the consequences extend far beyond administrative inconvenience — policies may lapse inappropriately while others remain active despite cancellation requirements. This reconciliation accuracy becomes critical when policyholders file claims, as the first determination in claim adjudication centers on whether the policy remains in force. By implementing streamlined reconciliation workflows that ensure accurate cash application and real-time bank verification, insurers can maintain policy accuracy and deliver on their core commitment to protect customers when they need it most.
Real-time visibility into financial systems ensures precise monitoring and compliance, akin to quality checks embedded within every step of a production line. Automated treasury operations offer a similar advantage for insurers. These systems deliver high reliability in transaction matching, drastically lowering error rates and ensuring real-time updates for full regulatory compliance.
Per Deloitte, “Strategically creating operational capabilities and embracing technology to automate treasury operations and payments processing are likely important components of achieving overall finance fitness.”8
The insurance sector is a major user of reconciliation technology, driven by the growing volume of daily transactions and the rising need to monitor and manage suspicious activities effectively. The banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) segment recently has been the highest contributor to the market and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.1% through 2033.9
The following components are essential for seizing this trend, thus allowing organizations to modernize financial workflows, enable better resource allocation, and enhance the policyholder experience.
Personalized User Experiences: An admin portal designed specifically for finance and treasury teams to deliver an easy, fast, and personalized experience. Solving back-office challenges contributes to the positive front-end experiences that both customers and agents expect.
Automated Billing System Reconciliation: API-driven programmatic reconciliation of payment transactions through settlement. Insurers should be able to report and reconcile transactions across payment types, methods, channels, and batches in a single environment.
Automated Bank Account Reconciliation: Auto-matching capabilities to ensure efficiency for those managing complex premium trust accounts. Automatic notifications need to provide timely alerts to allow for complete oversight.
Advanced Analysis Tools: Transactional search filters and financial dashboards to deliver detailed insights into payment trends, empowering insurers to make informed business decisions. Data must include chargebacks and declined payment attempts to ensure accuracy.
Advanced Transactional Search: Capabilities to save preferences, streamline workflow, and provide fast access to frequently run reports. This functionality should include the ability to refund premiums directly from search results for added ease and speed.
Energized by the success of its ClaimsPay® integration, West Bend Insurance Company recognized the urgent need to improve its inbound payment experience as well.
Transitioning to PremiumPay® has since enabled the carrier to streamline and modernize several processes and reap the full benefits of a unified payments platform.
As for the implementation experience, West Bend Chief Financial Officer Heather Dunn explained that it was far easier than other processes their team has been through with previous vendors.
In the Datos Insights report Paying It Forward: Innovation in Insurance Payment Ecosystems, Dunn said, “The system is so intuitive that it required minimal training or organizational change management — our associates just understand it without additional guidance. There’s still a genuine sense of excitement, which is truly invaluable.”10
Automation revolutionized manufacturing over a century ago, transforming it into a symbol of efficiency and innovation. Today, the insurance industry stands at a similar crossroads. As one of those technological endeavors, adopting automated reporting and reconciliation isn’t just about saving time and money — it’s about laying the groundwork for a future where workflows are smarter, resources are better allocated, and policyholder experiences define success.
Businesses which don’t adapt face the risk of being left behind, while those that do will thrive with improved efficiency, stronger financials, and customers who are lifetime loyalists. Are you ready to shift your organization’s treasury operations into high gear? Get in touch with the One Inc team to discover the driving force automation can bring to your insurance company.
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