De Goudse Insurance and Tacstone Technology: pioneers and partners in RPA and AI

For years, De Goudse has been a household name in – in particular – the Dutch business market. In this world, cost control and high-quality products are very important. De Goudse Verzekeringen was one of the first in this sector to see the possibilities of using RPA to reduce the implementation costs of administrative processes as well as improve quality. In this customer case you can read how De Goudse, with the help of Tacstone Technology, has grown from a pioneer in the application of RPA and AI in the insurance world to a true specialist.

Pioneer in the insurance industry

It’s September 2018. RPA is on the rise and the UiPath platform is rapidly gaining more users, but adoption rates in the Netherlands are still low. As one of the first in the industry, De Goudse kicks off its own RPA project. The vision was clear from the start: The central ICT department must support departments with a secure and robust ICT infrastructure and software applications, and in addition, the user departments themselves must be enabled to further automate their own processes where necessary using RPA.

As a Proof of Concept, an initial automated process was built in UiPath RPA. Customers taking out a new car insurance policy enter their claim-free years themselves. This statement forms the basis for the premium to be charged. A De Goudse employee then checked afterwards whether this statement was correct. If the statement was incorrect, the premium was adjusted retroactively. But because these manual checks were rather time-consuming, corrections were sometimes made some time later. This was annoying for the customer who had to pay a different premium – retroactively – even though he or she had usually entered the number of claim-free years in good faith.

So now this check has been fully automated. The software robot now performs the check weekly for each new policy. Any correction can be made quickly.

Pioneer in RPA gets help to scale up further

In recent years, De Goudse has been able to successfully adopt the growing capabilities of the UiPath RPA platform. The principle that departments could robotize their own processes with RPA worked well and motivating in principle, but this model began to hit its limits after a while. De Goudse’s RPA potential and ambition gradually proved to exceed its internal knowledge and capacity. A clear signal that outside help was desirable.

In April 2021, De Goudse therefore began a partnership with Tacstone Technology. This collaboration ensured that the application of RPA within the company could be further scaled up again. Where necessary, a few important changes were made first, to establish a good foundation for the coming years. For example, the infrastructure for RPA was “given a major overhaul” with a migration to UiPath’s cloud environment. Also, the so-called “development pipeline” has been redesigned and tightened, with clear procedures, development standards, templates and role assignment.

Artificial Intelligence in customer communications: the robot editor

De Goudse is not limited to applying RPA in simple straightforward administrative processes. There is also plenty of experimentation and development in the field of AI. The power of the UiPath platform is being fully utilized here: the software robot autonomously performs the steps in an automated process. Where necessary, the robot itself calls on an AI model, which provides it with the input to continue the process.

A good example is this: most communication between De Goudse and its customers is via e-mail. It is important that communication from De Goudse complies with the internal quality manual. The format, salutation, conclusion, content and – perhaps most importantly – the tone of voice of the e-mail must always be impeccably De Goudse. This obviously involves a professional image towards customers, but that is not the only thing. In today’s world where phishing e-mails are flying around your ears as a consumer, it is often precisely this kind of detail that makes a recipient judge an e-mail as authentic or not. And thus will or will not be read.

In collaboration with Tacstone, key communication standards from the De Goudse Quality Manual have been captured in a pre-trained AI model. This model is applied by the robot editor who periodically automatically checks every outgoing e-mail. This “robot editor” is proving very effective. The quality manager now gets automatic insight into the quality of the messages sent out via a report. This report is used to coach the Goudse employees and improve communication. And the customers? They now receive clear(r), recognizable and authentic communication from the insurer.