Australian Unity has created a library of reusable services that it is leveraging to develop a series of applications to improve processes and create better experiences for members and investors.
Australian Unity’s Michael McGavigan. (Credit: Appian)
The mutual – which has diverse operations in health insurance, independent and assisted living, wealth and investments, banking and insurance – has so far built five applications on Appian, with assistance from partner, Roboyo.
Appian makes a low-code application development platform as well as process automation software.
Executive general manager of enterprise architecture, digital and automation services Michael McGavigan told an Appian conference that the work began in its wealth and capital markets area “around May last year”. This started with 10Invest, a long-term investment bond product.
“Before introducing Appian, we had a portal [but] it was more of a ‘facade’,” McGavigan said.
“Clients went into this portal, typed all their information in, and then as soon as they clicked, it went to the floor, we picked it up and we started to do manual processing, handing it off to many people.
“That would usually take time to process.
“Errors came into it. The technology that we were putting the information into is about 30 years old, so it’s tab and keys [for data entry], and takes a lot of time to use.”
McGavigan said the process also prevented Australian Unity from scaling up the 10Invest offering.
“Every time they’d get more inflows [of applications], we had to hire more people, and that was a big inhibitor for them from a cost perspective,” he said.
The goal was to build an application that allowed for more straight-through processing of data, avoiding the need for Australian Unity staff to get involved.
“For all new [sign-ups], unless it breaks, we don’t touch it,” McGavigan said.
“We’re getting around 80 percent straight-through processing. The 20 percent that’s dropping out is more around ‘know Your client’ checks, so we have to follow those up where customers don’t pass that [check]. That’s the only reason why we don’t get 100 percent [straight-through processing].”
This initial application build took eight weeks, but a key feature of that build was the creation of components that could be reused on other application builds.
These components – common APIs, ‘know your client’ processes, user permissions, workflows, dashboards and reports – required only minor tweaks for each reuse.
“That allowed us to go faster,” McGavigan said.
Several applications, built on Appian, have since followed.
These include an application to improve regulatory oversight of funds management.
“As clients go into our products, they have to fill out target market determination (TMD) questionnaires, so we can quickly see if that [financial] product is the right product for them,” McGavigan said.
“We’re building that through Appian, which will give us greater insights, and if they don’t meet that [suitability bar], we can talk to them, and obviously, redirect them into the appropriate product or the like.”
Other applications aim to streamline onboarding and offboarding processes for residents entering retirement villages and to create a ‘single view of customers’ for investment advisors.
The newer applications are taking less time to develop – six weeks on average, compared to the eight weeks required to create the first Appian-based application.
McGavigan noted that Australian Unity has now set up an internal enterprise automation group to oversee business and robotic process automation strategy and direction.
He said the mutual wanted to use newer technologies “to drive efficiencies” in its legacy platforms and to “blend in AI, robotic process automation, business process automation, and workflow automation tools to drive efficiencies and provide a seamless and frictionless experience for our investors and members.”
Australian Unity continues to use Roboyo for enterprise automation solution architecture, development, quality assurance and related technical works.
McGavigan also revealed that, more broadly, Australian Unity restructured its technology operations in July of this year.
“We had a federated technology model, and all the platforms looked after their own technology,” he said.
“We’ve centralised that now and restructured that, which is the current role I’ve been appointed to.
“My leadership team and I are responsible for driving innovation, digital transformation, and automation across our enterprise, which is a great challenge for us because of the federated model, everyone had their own workflow processes and picked their own tools, so we’ve mostly got five different workflow management tools, five different CRM tools, and a lot of legacy applications.”