Insurance Technology
Article | July 14, 2022
The world is changing at a rapid pace, and no industry is immune to the need to evolve, upgrade, and innovate. The effects of mass digitization, artificial intelligence, machine learning, climate change, and the rise of financial-based cybercrime are all being felt in the business world. At the same time, consumer expectations have shifted dramatically, thanks in large part to companies like Netflix and Amazon, which have the technology and business models to provide the instant access to products and services that today's consumers have come to expect. When these changes are considered, it becomes clear that no industry, not even one as traditional, robust, and stable as the insurance industry, can afford to stand still.
Trend 1: CARE-Based Distribution Channels
Insurance companies are engaged in a "digital arms race," rushing to equip their distribution channels with digital tools to improve customer experiences. While CARE is the core experience that most insurance companies strive to provide in both distribution and sales, few achieve it consistently.
Trend 2: Quicker Payouts
Pay cycle time is fast becoming one of the most important differentiators between insurance companies. The winners of the future will use insurance technology to help them resolve claims quickly, at the touch of a button.
To this end, companies are adopting AI-enabled tools to automate both estimation and inspection. Telematics insurance solutions are expected to provide greater levels of contextual information that will support the smoother, faster, and more comprehensive settlement of claims.
Trend 3: The Rise of Usage-Based Models
As the pandemic made consumers aware of the waste involved in paying for insurance on cars that sit unused in driveways, interest in usage-based insurance products skyrocketed in 2021. As the nature of work changes and many people's daily commutes become obsolete, winning insurance companies will offer products that are more in line with how their customers live today. Telematics devices will allow insurers to offer products based on how and how far users drive.
Trend 4: Intelligent Automation
For a long time, the insurance industry has been experimenting with automation. The first phase was robotic process automation (RPA), which was viewed as a way to speed up processes and reduce costs without requiring significant changes to the underlying applications. While this was effective at capturing low-hanging fruit—those ubiquitous repetitive steps that were an unnecessary feature of so many insurance processes—it never really attacked productivity and core functions that required automation.
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Insurance Technology
Article | July 19, 2022
Kennedy's Elizabeth Bardsley discusses the risks brokers need to be aware of as more and more professionals work from home as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. As the insurance industry continues to grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, many have begun to give thought to what lasting changes will stay with us once the crisis has passed. For example, attitudes towards flexible working are expected to permanently change as more and more professionals work from home. And in a similar vein, we are likely to see a significant impact on the popularity of cyber and digital liability policies.
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Insurance Technology
Article | August 9, 2022
Insurtech is advancing, and the significance of an effective policy management system cannot be underrated. Policy management professionals understand the payoff it offers to an organization. On the other hand, a policy management system that just isn’t a good fit can prove to be a lot more expensive than previously budgeted.
So what is it actually costing you? Is your policy management software updated, or are you still using an old version? Do you know how much it is hampering your financial productivity? Even then, often, an outdated system may not be affecting your process significantly but damaging it in other intangible ways that are just as crucial to business success. Analyze your current system for the following:
Financial Implications of the Current System
Manual processes for policy creation and management make up the costliest part of running a policy management system. Paper-based solutions incur high costs that can be easily avoided by using digital systems that use automation extensively. With thousands of policies and compliance procedures for your team to manage, costs can add up quickly, especially with printing and distribution costs.
In addition to these expenses, manual processes are also responsible for policies being misplaced or lost. It may also result in a large fine for noncompliance if some policies are accessible to unauthorized employees.
Indirect Expenses
Organized policy management procedures are critical for high operational efficiencies. Policy management systems that require manual supervision can prove to be expensive over the long run as they require employees to monitor them constantly. However, automated policy management systems enable policy teams to optimize their resources better and direct team members to speed up other more crucial processes.
Furthermore, modern policy management systems don’t need constant monitoring and require only a one time set-up. This enables teams to allocate resources where they are urgently needed.
Wasted Resources
If you have an outdated policy management system, chances are it takes a lot more micro-managing than it needs to. Businesses must be able to optimize their resources better but with old and outdated systems, it ends up cutting into the productivity and performance on an everyday basis.
In addition, it puts undue stress on employees to keep up with compliance norms and changing regulations and policies. Policy management often requires various employees to pitch in with their inputs, and using an old system that doesn’t offer the option to collaborate can take away a huge chunk of productivity daily.
What’s the Bottom Line?
Automated policy management systems can undoubtedly save you a lot of time and resources. If you’re facing sky-high costs just to maintain your policy management system, it might be time for a rethink. From automating the lifecycle of policies and procedures to streamlining the management of policies by your agents, consolidating a policy management process with software is one of the best insurtech trends to look out for in 2023. It is probably what your organization needs to move the needle.
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Insurance Technology
Article | August 18, 2021
There is no doubt that we are living in an era in which insurers have been called to transform their business offerings, infrastructure and operations. Successful transformation translates into new revenue opportunities, stronger customer relationships and sustained brand relevance. However, this need to evolve cannot be addressed through superficial changes. Leading insurers are transforming their core offerings to completely reimagine their role in the insurance landscape. As the nominations and winners for the Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Core Insurance Transformation award show, leading insurers are starting their core transformation at the top, and applying it to every touchpoint of the business.
Nine pioneering nominees
The nine nominees in the core insurance transformation category lead core insurance transformation in various innovations across their value chain. The nominations were:
AXA for A.Iconic Claims
Discovery for AI Quote
RBC for their conversational AI Platform, driven by Personal Insights for Life Insurance Application
Generali for their fund transaction through blockchain innovation
FWD for the AI-Everywhere Smart Insurance Framework
China Life Insurance for an intelligent value evaluation system for salesforce
Multiasistencia for MACARENA, an innovative AI voicebot that provides100% automated First Notice of Loss in home insurance claims
Humania for their ground-breaking income insurance for accident and disability claims
Mapfre for Verbatims, a cognitive behavioural model that integrates live customer feedback
As can be seen, by the nominees above, AI is a leading technology in core insurance transformation. In fact, every innovation used technology in fresh, structured ways to create a lasting impact on their business. Let’s look closer at the winners, and what their innovations say about how to lead core insurance transformation in 2021.
Gold: Discovery
Discovery are transforming the way brokers and clients engage with them through the introduction of their AI Quote service. Users are able to upload a PDF or pictures of competitor insurance and investment documents via phone or computer, and receive an equivalent Discovery quote in seconds. The entire journey can be completed in under a minute. Brokers can take the quotes to their clients and where a client has completed the direct journey, they will be called by a sales agent to discuss the specifics of the quote and close the sale.
Romek Sadowski, Discovery Life’s Head of Technical Marketing says, “Ultimately, AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR) technology has been able to equip us with a seamless journey for clients, advisers and employees of the business as a whole. For clients, benefits include receiving a comparable quote in less than a minute and an improved understanding of Discovery’s products relative to the market. For advisers, key benefits include more accurate and consistent competitor comparisons, as well as a reduction in sales and quoting frictions. By automating the process of extracting data from policy documents and then converting it into comparable Discovery Life benefits, our advisers are able to spend less time on manual work and more time assisting our clients.
AI Quote has also created opportunities for Discovery Life to incorporate digital tools into many of our existing processes and create a single, seamless, digital journey for advisers and clients alike. Additional innovations, such as Virtual Underwriting which allows clients to undergo underwriting from anywhere they choose, have been developed and are being refined in order to make this goal for a seamless digital journey a reality.”
This is an important innovation in the South African insurance and investment landscape, which is highly developed and innovative, and characterised by frequent product updates and enhancements. While products are fine-tuned to meet customer needs, it’s difficult for brokers to keep track of various products in the market and how they compare from one competitor to another. Clients are also not in the position to understand how exactly their financial products compare against competitors.
“The South African insurance industry is a complex environment with a vast array of sophisticated products. Financial advisers are faced with numerous competitors each with multiple products and options, resulting in countless different quoting combinations. By automating the comparison process, AI Quote simplifies the new business experience for both advisers and clients, increasing conversion rates and improving stakeholder satisfaction. AI Quote ensures that clients who have existing policies with our competitors are quoted comparable Discovery benefits and gives advisers confidence that they are providing clients with the best possible advice when comparing policies.”
By removing sales frictions and automatically carrying out comparisons, Discovery’s AI Quote aims to enhance the company’s exposure to potential clients, attract brokers to sell Discovery products, improve the accuracy of replacements and promote Discovery’s brand as a market-leading innovator. With an efficient client- and broker-centric platform, Discovery has taken quoting to the next level.
The potential for AI, however, is just beginning to be untapped. Romek concludes, “The insurance landscape is evolving, and we have seen an influx in microinsurance providers, direct-to-customer insurers and niche players in the market. When it comes to life insurance, clients are faced with a dauntingly large number of options – and that number is increasing. Within such complexity, manual processing of data in order to generate benefit comparisons is simply inefficient. A key benefit of AI is that it can complement or replace manual processes and allows for a far more streamlined user experience.
Outside of the new business process, AI has displayed immense success in other areas such as customer service, underwriting and claims. Chatbots are now commonly used by insurers around the world to assist clients and answer their questions. Car insurance has been fundamentally changed through advancements in telematics. Big data is more readily available and, with the help of AI, can be utilised to make faster and more accurate pricing and underwriting decisions.”
Silver: Generali
Generali conducted a deep transformation in the way they transact with their counterparts and custodians through the use of blockchain technology.
Generali France currently processes 250 thousand orders on funds (to cover unit-linked policies) per year through classical schemes via custodians. The aim is to generate a direct link with asset managers for trading shares of funds without using the costly transfer agent of custodians.
With this transformation in mind, Generali France invested in a startup called Iznes, developing a trading platform on funds based on blockchain technology. With this as a foundation, Generali has begun to connect its IT and operations to the innovative platform.
The innovation can serve all middle and back offices of investment departments and asset management companies. It crunches transaction costs and creates a direct link between the buy-side and the sell-side. The total cost of Generali Unit-linked orders is expected to drop by half, supposing that 50% of counterparts join the platform.
Bronze: FWD
Led by their customers’ needs and vision to change the way people feel about insurance, FWD Group Data developed a ‘Smart Insurance Framework’ which sees the business embarking on a ‘AI-everywhere’ approach. The platform has transformed the entire insurance journey for both their customers and employees with the use of advanced technologies and AI power.
To create a simpler and smoother insurance experience for customers, FWD created a modern data architecture framework that improves operation efficiency internally and convenience externally. The Group Office Data Platform (GODP) streamlines and integrates all data into a single platform that is smart, secured and scalable. This platform allows business users to harness data, insights and run analytics across all our markets, to help support a spectrum of initiatives in FWD with data. The clever use of data allows FWD to evolve and predict customer responses more accurately, develop a better understanding of customer needs and behaviour, and in turn serve them better.
As the nominees and winners show, the insurance industry is embracing technology to pre-empt, analyze and streamline customer, broker and employee experiences. We would love to hear how you are transforming your core insurance operations. Submit your core insurance innovation to the Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards for 2022.
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