Healthcare insurance provider Bupa digitally transforms its legal team with Josef

The in-house legal team at the healthcare insurance giant Bupa APAC has digitally transformed its operations with Josef.

Since automating everyday legal tasks, the team’s working more efficiently, their lawyers have become key enablers of change and they have more time for higher-level, more complex tasks.

Chief of Staff at Bupa APAC, Anna Lin, and Legal Manager – International & Corporate, Fleur Hewitt, share the company’s automation journey and what the legal team have built so far.

Bupa’s drive to digitally transform

“At Bupa, we’re always looking at ways we can enhance how we do business, serve our customers, serve our people within the organization, and perform in a competitive way,” Anna explains.

“Digitally transforming allows us to touch on all of this, and, for the legal team, it ensures that our people are learning the skills required to stay competitive in today’s environment. Working digitally is no longer tomorrow’s problem.”

Fleur adds, “There’s definitely a technological tide turning.”

“With tech like Josef, we can now automate repetitive legal tasks, whereas previously, technology would tend to help more with word processing, emails, document preparation and so on. Nowadays, if you select the right product, it can pay off by giving back our lawyers and the business time in their day.”

Why Anna and Fleur embrace legaltech

For Fleur, “it’s the efficiencies and enhanced productivity.”

“The benefits in these areas seem endless and we’re finding that legaltech helps lawyers evolve from the more traditional legal experts and risk mitigators into core business enablers.”

Anna adds, “Personally, I’ve been passionate about tech for a long time now, having previously worked in PWC Legal’s Digital and Technology team and I believe that practice is so much more important than theory. So, I love to see this come to life every day at Bupa.”

Change management 101

“We ran a pilot initially to test a few things,” Anna says.

“We wanted to find out:

1. Whether the business had the tolerance for moving to automation;
2. What preferences people had for interacting with a human versus a bot; and
3. What repetitive work could be made more efficient.”

“It was crucial that we brought the business along for the journey as that way we could better understand people’s needs and how to automate at a comfortable pace for everyone involved.”

Bupa’s suite of Josef tools

“We started things off with Sam the Running Elephant, a triage bot that has since become a digital front door for our business clients,” Anna says.

“From there, users can access all sorts of bots from agreement generator tools that draft NDAs and more complex agreements like our Master Service Agreement, to a competition terms and conditions bot to assist the business to choose the correct format for competitions.”

Fleur explains, “I built a Fit Out Agreement and Corresponding Briefing Note bot. Like the NDA and MSA bots, it’s self-serve and has cut down on a lot of emails that we’d previously send back and forth with the property team.”

“Now the property team can start preparing and populating an agreement all by themselves! The whole process has been terrific for everyone involved.”

Bupa’s key automation lessons

“It’s better to take things slow and automate something that’s low risk to start, like an NDA or an internal contract briefing note,” Anna says.

“By starting small and in categories, you can better guide stakeholders through the various technological and cultural shifts that come with new tools and processes.”

Fleur says, “Yes, and for us lawyers who are time poor, we’ve learned that spending the time and cost upfront is a worthwhile investment. In the long term, tasks are completed quicker and you help minimize risks for your clients too.”

In-house teams, listen up!

“Trust your gut, know there are no silly questions, and consider integrating your new tools with platforms already used by your organization. That way you’ll deliver solutions that work for everyone,” Anna says.

“Just give it a go. If you can build tools that minimise low-level, time-consuming work, you’ll have more room for everything else in your day,” Fleur adds.

“I was hesitant at first, but I knew that I had to dive in to save more time in the future. I thought, ‘the future Fleur will thank me.’”

Learn more

For L’Oréal‘s in-house legal team, technology isn’t an afterthought but a central part of everyday operations thanks to Legal Counsel and automation extraordinaire Candy Welsh.

Learn how her team’s self-serve contract and regulatory tools have empowered the business and made compliance that bit simpler.