Digital insurance agency, Nsure.com, reduces manual processing time by 60% using generative AI and Power Automate

Nsure.com is a licensed digital insurance agency based in Florida, United States, that enables people to buy home and auto insurance on their smartphones, tablets, or computers in all 50 US states. Nsure.com matches customers with insurance carriers to help them discover their best insurance options by comparing their requirements against a database of information from over 20 data sources and over 50 top-tier insurers across the nation. 

The company began its business back in 2018 with a set of proprietary algorithms that recommended appropriate coverage and generated a quote comparison from multiple carriers. But many parts of the quoting and purchasing process required manual processing by Nsure.com agents. As site traffic grew, it became increasingly difficult for agents to manage the workload. And that’s when the company began using Microsoft Power Platform to automate business processes. 

Power Automate was later introduced to streamline hundreds of previously manual tasks. For example, if an insurance application is missing information required for quote calculations, agents no longer have to manually contact customers directly. Instead, a flow in Power Automate sends customized email and text messages back to the customer requesting additional information. Once submitted via the customer’s Nsure.com account, a revised quote is generated and sent back to the customer for review.   

A more efficient platform has, in turn, made for more efficient agents. “Automation using Power Platform has allowed us to grow rapidly, while maintaining high quality of service. We can sell many times more policies per agent in comparison to offline agencies,” says Nsure.com co-founder, Wojtek Gudaszewski.

Since implementing Power Platform, Nsure.com has grown rapidly. From 2020-2023, Nsure’s revenue grew at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 100%. However, with this success came other scalability challenges. Even with extensive automation in place, more than 100 customer representatives were processing over 100,000 customers interactions each month through calls, emails, and texts. Again, the company turned to Power Platform for help. 

Harnessing AI for advanced automation 

To address complex business processes not already covered by Power Platform, Nsure.com and their technology partner Netwise began exploring the newly released generative AI capabilities of Power Automate, powered by Open AI APIs and Azure Open AI Service. 

The results were impressive: thanks to AI-driven automation through these new Power Platform tools, Nsure.com customer service representatives reduced time spent on manual tasks by more than 60%, allowing them to focus on complex escalations and building customer relationships. This, in turn, has reduced associated costs by 50% and led to a significant improvement in customer satisfaction, resulting in a 4.7 (out of 5) star rating from over 4,000 reviews on review sites. 

Here are just a few examples of how Power Platform has made an impact:

Cleaning and merging data from multiple carriers

As you might expect, compiling and accurately comparing insurance quotes for thousands of customers is an extremely complex business. This task was further complicated by the fact that not all insurance carriers in Nsure.com’s network have APIs for integrated data flow. Processing of data from legacy, non-API carriers had to be done manually. Today, a system comprised of over 70 different cloud and desktop flows extract this data from Azure Blob Storage and combines it with data from the API carriers. “It used to take over 100 people to validate and standardize data to and from carriers. With generative AI and Power Automate, this same process can be managed by just a few people,” says John Haisch, VP of AI and Automation at Nsure.com. Running the desktop flows on Power Automate hosted RPA added yet another layer of operational efficiency. “We leverage Power Automate hosted RPA to run desktop flows at scale on a pool of over 80 machines, requiring no VM infrastructure from our end.” 

Processing unstructured content in insurance documents

During the quoting process, insurance carriers often require additional documentation from customers such as mitigation reports and construction permits. Previously agents had to manually review these documents from customers for the necessary information. Now, with AI-driven flows, this information can be automatically extracted and fed into another flow which updates best-policy coverage. 

Managing unstructured data in customer emails

Shared inboxes at Nsure.com are flooded with huge volumes customer email, creating a backlog for agents. Nsure.com used AI Builder in Power Automate to create AI-driven flows that can analyze this incoming data, prioritize items requiring immediate attention, and either prepare an automated response or route to an agent. These AI-driven flows also provide sentiment analysis as well as named entity recognition to extract data such as datetime elements. Flows can even route to other systems. For example, if a customer sends an email about not being available for a scheduled appointment, the model can understand the context, and secure the next available timeslot in the booking system. 

Accelerating development using fusion development and Copilots 

As with any successful startups, Nsure.com is all about rapid innovation. New ideas for additional functionality and process improvements pour in from both agents and customers. The simplicity and flexibility of Power Platform has enabled developers to incorporate these ideas rapidly into the system. 

“Power Platform allows us to innovate at an amazing pace,” says Gudaszewski. “During early development, we had new builds rolling out every week, often comprising hundreds of updates. The same functionality would have taken us two to three times longer using traditional code.” 

Nsure.com has always adopted a fusion approach to building on Power Platform. Developers at Netwise provide the initial Power Platform builds and then quickly ramp up developers at Nsure.com to update and build apps within the platform. Very quickly, even product managers at Nsure.com with no formal development experience can pitch in, designing Power BI dashboards as well as new features and improvements.  

To move things along even faster, Nsure.com used Copilot in Power Automate for much of the recent automation work. “Building flows with Copilot in Power Automate was insanely easy. In most cases, we just had to describe the flow we wanted in natural language and Copilot created the flow exactly as we needed it,” says Jakub Skalbania, CGO, Netwise, and acting CTO at Nsure.com. “A flow that would normally take us at least 4 hours to create and configure only took us 40 minutes using Copilot in Power Automate.”

To help manage an ever-expanding development workload, Nsure.com uses Azure DevOps for all its Power Platform work, including DevOps pipelines for Dataverse and custom-code components. Additionally, the security of apps and workflows is managed using data loss protection policies and other controls in the Power Platform admin center. 

Expanding support for sales, customer service, and analytics

The latest automations that Nsure.com has developed with Power Platform is only the beginning. 

Additionally, the company also plans to expand its analytical capabilities. Nsure.com has already created hundreds of Power BI dashboards that generate insights across digital marketing initiatives, employee performance, and sales performance. A recent move to Microsoft Fabric has taken the system even further. “Microsoft Fabric has significantly improved our analytics by establishing a unified data lake and integrating all data sources for faster processing. This allows both Power BI and Notebook analysts to efficiently reuse the same models, enhancing data analysis and visualization in Power BI,” says Gudaszewski’s business partner and Nsure co-founder, Adrian Dzielnicki.

“We want to add even more components that will allow us to generate deeper customer insights and even higher conversions to purchase,” said Dzielnicki. For this, Nsure.com is also looking at Azure services like Machine Learning and Cognitive Services. “With Power Platform and Azure services, we have all the tools we need to build on our success and deliver an even smarter and faster insurance buying experience.”