I will reply with another question: what does
digital transformation mean per se?
Digital transformation had become a buzzword
and as every fashionable and very popular
term, its original meaning got lost.
Different industries, different companies
but even different departments may use the
term to refer to different technology’s
impact.
However, there is no doubt that more than
any other sector, the insurance one is experiencing
a profound revolution.
Weak financial performance, cost pressures,
new competitive threats and increasing regulatory
requirements are among the forces that demand
change and disruptive business models.
Moreover, customers themselves demand for
a near real-time relationship with the insurer
in terms of submissions, claims and customer
journey in general.
Which is funny because you think about Digital
Transformation as a term which is indeed including
the adjective “Digital”, but does this
entail been paperless?
Well, Insurances are all but paperless, but
despite this, Artificial Intelligence is really
and concretely transforming the industry.
Referring back to Gartner Hype Cycle we are
finally experiencing the “trough of disillusionment”
thanks to experiments and implementations
which failed to deliver.
Personally, I don’t think that a second
AI winter will happen, I’d rather expect
the slope of enlightenment.
The insurance sector seems to be the right
partner for Artificial Intelligence, it’s
like the perfect marriage since there’s
plenty of areas where there could be benefit
and advantages provided by Artificial Intelligence
solutions such as: IoT, driverless car, telematics,
wearables, text analytics and cognitive computing
to mention some of them.
Think about how many labour-intensive processes
are in place in the insurances, they all require
analysis and retrieval of increasing amounts
of diverse information coming from different
kinds of documents.
To be more concrete, all insurance players
are looking at AI solutions, and some of them
already implemented up&running and productive
platforms and applications in terms of: accelerated
underwriting, claims management automation,
cognitive assistant, and property reports
automatic risk grading for example.
Companies that have already implemented Artificial
Intelligence solutions to automate their processes
such as claims management and underwriting
have seen a relevant reduction in terms of
processing times.
Think about reducing your processing times
from hours to seconds, hence efficiency gain
is by far one of the biggest and more tangible
advantages of AI solutions, but this is not
the only one, think about for example increased
standardization or improved customer experience
just to mention some other benefits.
AI-powered claims applications by detecting
automatically potential weak signals and inconsistences
across the documents could fight also fraudulent
claims, which represent one of the most-common
pain point across all the line of businesses.
As well as AI-powered underwriting applications
could automatically detect potential inconsistences
and misalignments embedded in the policies
and hence, reduce the potential risks insurances
are exposed to.
