AI in Insurance. What digital assistants mean to the insurance industry.

AI helps us cope with the changing insurance landscape

The use of AI within all industries, large and small is somewhat of a debate in 2019. A few argue that their uses are still premature and it would take a few more years until we’re able to gauge, as a community, if the uses of concepts like artificial intelligence, digital assistants and intelligent virtual assistants are here to help us deal with the radical change in the landscape were witnessing in the insurance industry.

It doesn’t really matter if you’re passionate about or if you’ve dedicated a lot of your time, effort and resources to understanding the world of fintech and insurance, you’re eventually bound to meet that proverbial wall of stagnation and immovability in business tact.

This is true if you’re looking at the insurance industry in terms of underwriting models; filled with assessments of creditworthiness, selling and packaging of security with client portfolio management. However, if you’re an expert, you start to look at it in a whole new way.

The insurance experts like to think of it as something that’s a lot more personal, and more importantly, a lot more meaningful.

Community & Creativity. What insurance really means

“The truth is that despite the fact that I’m very passionate about insurance and I’ve dedicated my entire professional life to this field. I’ve come to realize that it may not have the most inspiring reputation, but as I’ve reflected on my path and my work, I’ve realized that my story isn’t about insurance. My story is about community, about how I’ve tried to help my community and people all over.” Said Laura Drabik, Group Vice President of Business Innovation for Guidewire Software on a recent TEDx talk on technology at Santa Clara University.

This does ring true. Everything that’s around us and exists within this data-oriented ecosystem is built on the principality of community. Take brands like Amazon & Netflix, they’ve managed to completely disrupt the market and this has definitely got its roots with how these brands choose to interact with their customers. It’s customer delight galore, and more importantly – it’s instantaneous.

We’ve even got sharing economies and communities now, brands like Uber and Airbnb have completely changed the game when it comes to industries like travel and hospitality. Regardless of the numbers and what their revenue is.

Take travel giant Uber, they’ve understood over time that market reputation and how you’re understood and seen as a big player within a space, by both your consumers and investors is a lot more important than just driving up the numbers.

Laura goes onto talk about being bold.

Now,  here where I was a bit skeptical on hearing this.
Let me try and explain –  if I were just trying to understand the automotive industry, I would have a remotely decent and concrete understanding of how the process works; from inception to launch.

Whether the company functions on the principle of horizontal integration, as most automotive makers do, or whether they were built on the model of vertical integration, similar to our friendly automaker, Tesla. Regardless of the structure, I’d still have a fairly good understanding of how the industry works.

Chassis, car parts, and everything. It’s bold, and a pronounced process. It’s almost brick and mortar like; it’s tangible, it’s a lot easier to understand and grasp. However, this isn’t the case with insurance.

Why AI in insurance allows us to be bold

Insurance is about being bold, says Laura, but the more you think about it, the more it starts to make sense.

Whether it’s how insurance helps a community recover from a natural disaster, helping families to find their balance who’ve been affected by a storm – it’s really about helping a community, in a bold way to thrive in the face of an unfortunate catastrophe.

What Laura helped us understand is that in an industry that’s riddled with clauses and dotted lines, we often forget the end goal and what we’re trying to achieve, so we took two steps back to move forward. Once we understood this, it was just a matter of time before we started to see the benefits of what something like artificial intelligence could do for the insurance industry.

Insurance isn’t about paper-pushing, clips and sitting behind a desk in your crisped pressed shirt with yesterday’s coffee stains on today’s policies. It not about picking up the phone and calling an insurance company, as you’re faced with unimpressive and obnoxious replies like, “the policy requirement explicitly states”, in essence, it’s none of that.

It’s really about compassion and empathy.
In short, it’s about understanding people.

It’s really your commitment to community building that allows you to prosper as an insurance company in an industry that’s filled with more clout between the lines than any other out there.

Insuretech. Insurance. Innovation

Insure-tech. Insurance meets tech to create innovative and new pathways in a very rigid and old industry. What you’ve got to understand is, when we’ve heard about insurance being talked about, and whether it’s around the family table or if we’ve heard it in regard to your neighborhood politicians’ promise, it’s always been uttered as an after-thought. It’s almost like if talked about, you’re looking at life skewered on at a pretty negative angle – and here’s where technology changes things and it’s transformed how insurance providers reach out to their consumers.

Insure-tech is essentially the confluence of technology and insurance. Think of it as a really good juxtaposition of yesterday’s values combined with today’s technology, effectively. With the help of AI in insurance, companies are allowed to meet its boldness and not cower under complexities like policies and stand camouflaged in-between dotted lines at the bottom of a policy form.

Take Slice, an insuretech innovator that insure Uber and Lyft drivers. They’re what we call on-demand insurance. Little policies, minute paperwork, and a whole lot of innovation with the help of technology. It’s a classic example of technology helping create a safer and better ecosystem for the community.

It’s really simple and intuitive. The app turns on when you start your ride and automatically turns off when you’re done. What this does is two of the biggest advantages of AI-assisted insurance providers.

They’re able to give their consumers insurance exactly when they need it, and they’re able to do this really-really fast with as little friction as possible.

An untapped market.
AI in insurance is reaching out to more people

With more and more insurance companies serving niche markets with the use of technology, it’s necessary that we adopt innovative and better modes of communication with each and every one of our customers.

Enter digital assistants.
AI-powered digital assistants are able to handle really high volume butpredominantly simple tasks that may, for instance, be associated with something like a claim.

Digital assistants integrated into an insurance companies business model means freeing up more employer time – employees spend as little time as possible related to mundane and simple tasks and are able to focus on larger wealth creation opportunities.

Today, we’ve got digital assistants that are available on our favorite social media messengers, making it possible for us to reach out to our insurance providers in no time at all.

Companies like interface, who’ve specialized in developing and integrating conversational AI-powered digital assistants, make it further easier for us to talk to our providers in a rich and meaningful way; explaining out our situation to them and claiming our insurance in no time at all.

Targeted & specific.
Why you need it, when you need & how!

It’s insurance when you need it the most and insurance that counts, this is essentially what AI-assisted insurance has been able to achieve. Speedy, effective and efficient insurance.

AI in insurance has become almost synonymous when it comes to leading with vision and innovation in a tried and tested industry.

Insuretech understands that today’s present generation. We’re driven by our values and our affiliation to our communities, and what they mean to us.

We’re driven to work in environments that are not necessarily the safest or highest paying, but by a combination of a job that will support us effectively, allow for better innovation, creativity and ultimately allow us to contribute towards something that’s even greater than ourselves.

About interface

Currently engaged with several enterprises in the Americas, Europe-Middle East-Africa (EMEA), and Asia-Pacific region, interface’s Intelligent Virtual Assistants or IVAs make every digital channel of an enterprise intelligent. With rich IVAs, an enterprise can leapfrog customer & employee experience to voice-first natural language interface. For more information, check out interface.ai.

Read our blog on: Reasons AI-Powered Digital Assistants Succeed