Imagine automating up to 25% of business processes, and allowing human teams to shift to deeper problem-solving and customer relations tasks. Then picture reducing the operational cost to insurers by up to 20% through that automation and digitization strategy alone. Imagine reducing inbound phone calls by more than 30%, simply by providing customers with proactive status updates.
With artificial intelligence capabilities, insurance companies and the insurance sector can step fully into the world of digital transformation, making these improvements (and so much more) a reality. Let’s explore how AI technology is changing the insurance world to make it faster, more efficient, and even better for customers, and carrier employees.
Data science is bringing new innovations to the very traditional world of insurance and that's good news for customers, employees, and insurance executives alike. Here are our favorite things coming true thanks to this new tech.
For example, auto carriers are using data from devices in vehicles to track driving data or assess damage after an accident. Health companies leverage data from fitness trackers to offer health rewards based on activity metrics and predictive analytics. Sensors in homes and buildings can trigger warnings to avert a catastrophic loss. With the right processing support, insurance companies are leveraging data to deeply understand user needs and bring state-of-the-art data analysis to better understand the consequences of human interaction.
As advances in robotics inch us towards autonomous vehicles and devices, insurance companies need to adjust how risk assessment plays out. For example, they may need new methods for assessing risk and property damage in 3D printed buildings to add to traditional assessment tools for standard builds. Evaluating liability in a car accident may include reviewing black box data.
AI is taking on human-like processing thanks to advances in cognition. For example, neural networks are models inspired by the structure of the human brain. Deep learning —traditionally implemented by leveraging neural networks— allows insurance companies to process billions of data points from IoT, customer interactions, robotics, and even other unstructured data sources.
In the past, the data that AI now can process without difficulty was too complex to train models to evaluate. Now there are models trained to evaluate images pixel by pixel or syllable by syllable. Natural language processing, computer vision, and image classification are becoming more economical to use in production by the day and don’t rely on human beings.
Even better, the prevalence of new technologies will make it easier for companies to adopt and customize new solutions like individually tailored insurance coverage. The insurance industry may be able to create new types of protocols to manage security or develop new use cases. Thanks to existing solutions, it can more easily train machine learning models or build better automation strategies.
These are trends are not mainstream across all carriers, but AI is currently impacting insurance through fraud detection, better customer response, and real-time automation. For example, one insurance company used a virtual assistant to automate claims processing and reduce process duration from three weeks to one hour. In addition, Tower Insurance used artificial intelligence products to completely reinvent their customer experience despite being a company started during Queen Victoria’s reign.
The most critical component for making these and other use cases a reality today is a solution that offers quick deployment with no coding or technical expertise required to create automated 2-way conversations. For example, an intelligent automation platform already trained on insurance-specific conversational data delivers a solution that insurance companies can deploy right away.
And instead of replacing customer service representatives, underwriters, or claims adjusters, they offer support and consequently can improve response times and automate typical inbound and outbound requests. AI ensures employee availability to customers with more complex service needs and more time-intensive claims processes.
Thanks to no code options and ease of machine learning deployment, insurance companies don’t need their own trained data scientists or team of developers. Insurance companies can reap the full benefits of things like omnichannel conversation automation, email triaging and document processing for:
These tools are designed to satisfy the customer satisfaction initiatives across all groups in the insurance sector as insurers fight for market share.
The best first step after finding the right tooling, is using claims data or customer data (sometimes gathered and stored over decades) to try and distill useful information. Insurers stand to benefit from evaluating that information to better their underwriting processes, insurance policies, and gaps in customer communications.
AI is the future of insurance, and intelligent automation will soon shift from being a key differentiator to enabling experiences that customers expect all the time from their insurance carriers and health plans. It may feel like early days for insurers and as if AI is only usable in marketing efforts, but that is not the case. Companies are already reducing friction and improving customer experience without expanding their technology departments. They’re enjoying the benefits of virtual assistants, addressing fraudulent claims, gaining real-time insight, and responding to the very competitive insurance market.
It’s time to discover how artificial intelligence can drive value for companies in the insurance space, their customers, and for their own employees.
Ushur delivers the world’s first AI-powered Customer Experience Automation™ platform that has been purpose-built, from the ground up, to intelligently automate entire customer journeys, end to end. Designed to deliver delightful, hyper-personalized customer experiences through rapid issue resolution and unified, omnichannel engagement, Ushur is the first-of-its-kind system of intelligence. It combines Conversational Automation and Knowledge Work Automation in a No-Code, Cloud-native, SaaS platform to digitally transform every step of the complete enterprise customer experience – from Micro-engagements™ to entire customer journeys.
Backed by leading investors including Third Point Ventures, 8VC, Pentland Ventures, Aflac Ventures and Iron Pillar, Ushur’s Customer Experience Automation™ solutions are currently in production at some of the leading insurance providers across the globe including Irish Life, Unum, Aetna, Cigna and Tower Insurance.
