Cigna Envoy, the insurance company's app for American employees living abroad, has added a mobile claims function that allows users to file a claim by taking a picture of a receipt. The functionality is mostly unnecessary for the domestic version of the app, MyCigna, because for those users claims are submitted by their provider.

"We’ve been able to submit claims using the Cigna envoy website but not using the app," Leah Cotterill, leader of Cigna's Global Client Manager team in the United States, told MobiHealthNews. "This is what’s recently been launched and we’ve taken it from not just being to submit the claim, but being able to take a photograph submit the claim through the app. It’s truly a paperless and a quick process. That’s what customers were asking for: make this as easy for us as possible."

According to a Cigna statement, the mobile claims process is actually faster than the online version: it takes 10 minutes to submit a claim, but only 4 minutes via the app. The app is available for both iOS and Android. Cigna competitor Aetna added a very similar functionality to their app for non-US-based members two years ago.

The Cigna Envoy app also includes a function that lets "globally mobile employees" find providers in their network nearby using geolocation and a virtual insurance card that members can present to some providers if they lose or misplace their physical card. In addition to submitting claims on the app, users can track that claim via the app or website as it's processed by Cigna.

Even outside the United States, Cotterill said, most providers will still file the claims themselves.

"The primary tenet of our value proposition globally is access to a network," she said. "Seventy-one percent of all our claims are paid to a network provider directly. [Users] don’t have to worry about an app. But if you have to pay the claim yourself or you’ve chosen to pay the claim yourself, let’s make sure that it’s simple and easy."