Automating the Insurance Claims Process with Legacy Systems: Part I: Electronic Signatures

Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts focused on automating the insurance claims process. In this series, we will highlight several ways we can automate different stages of an insurance claim. This post will focus on sending an editable PDF to a customer to fill and digitally sign. The next post will go over a scenario where the customer fills out a document without the help of a fillable form. In that post, we will use AI to automate the extraction of the customer’s responses from the form. In the final post, we will look at Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and how it can be used to take the customer’s responses and enter them into legacy systems that previously required manual data entry.

Solution Overview

In this scenario, we are going to create a solution where a travel claim form is sent to a customer. The customer will receive an editable form that requires an electronic signature. Once the form is signed, we will update our records to indicate the document was signed. This example will use Power Automate, and SharePoint will be our document repository. It’s worth noting that Power Automate has many connectors that can be used to connect to many databases, document repositories, and other services (e.g., DocuSign, Adobe Sign).

Process Automation with Adobe Sign Integration

Let’s take a look at a simple workflow example. We begin with a manual trigger. An employee of our travel insurance company manually starts our workflow by adding an editable PDF to a document library. The workflow collects information about the document, including the contents and any metadata.

After those first three steps, the next two show our Adobe Sign integration. First, we upload a document to Adobe Sign and retrieve a unique document ID, followed by a step where we create the agreement and send it to the customer for a signature.

Next, we simply wait for the customer to complete and sign the document. For the purposes of this example (and for simplicity), we are constantly checking for the agreement’s status to change to “SIGNED” and setting an arbitrary delay after each status check.

Finally, for demonstration purposes, when a signature is received and our file is updated, we upload a copy of the signed file into another library.

Here is a full look at each step of the process from start to finish.

The Process in Action

Now let’s look at this process in action. We begin by creating an item in a library containing our editable PDF. The only field provided is our customer’s email.

The Flow is then manually started, and it begins to collect information about the file, preparing it in Adobe Sign, and sending an email to the recipient asking them to complete the form and sign. The recipient receives an email that resembles the following image:

When recipients clicks a link, it takes them to Adobe Sign where they can fill in each of the fields and sign.

Each yellow field is editable. The recipient can simply click in each box and begin typing. The signature field is slightly different—triggering a modal (pop-up) with various ways to sign the document.

Once signed, and confirmed, the Flow updates the original metadata and places a signed copy in another library.

Conclusion

This post explored several components of an automated electronic signature process using Power Automate and Adobe Sign—a few concepts in a single Flow. First, we demonstrated a process that started from a document prepared for a customer (though we could have also started from a list item or database record). We also saw the process end with a copy of the signed copy saved in SharePoint. The customer was automatically sent an email with a link to a copy of the file found in Adobe Sign, and the process periodically checked the file to determine if it has been signed. Now that you understand the basic signature-collection process, the next post will look at how you can automate and record the collection of customer responses from a document. In the meantime, if you are looking for ways to automate the process of collecting electronic signatures, please feel free to reach out to Anexinet for more information at any time.