While some insurance firms are beginning to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their businesses, are they really prepared for the AI revolution? Probably not, is the honest answer.
The insurance industry is a fine example of where customers don’t really need to speak with a human. They could buy or make changes to their policy online. Then if they need to claim, this could be done through an app. And any payments, would, of course, be facilitated digitally as many are already.
Some of these features have already started being implemented across the insurance industry.
Robotics and AI are changing the way insurance are transacted. Robotics is being used in the industry in the form of automation. Robotics is being used in communications with clients after certain events or inquiries, and it’s also being used to transfer large amounts of data across systems. It enables tasks to be done more efficiently than any human.
Insurers have huge amounts of data which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. While this information is no doubt quite valuable, crunching through it all requires great computing power and careful monitoring.
Through data analytics insurers can learn more about the risks they are insuring and trends that are occurring. It can also help to detect fraudulent behavior. But, as efficient as AI is, these tasks still need to be overseen by qualified people who can put the results to good use.
When it comes to claims, robotics and AI could speed up the whole process significantly. It could be used to first asses the damage through a series of photos and then determine whether the car was to be written off or repaired.
However, in order for that to happen, someone first needs to train the computer to recognise damage from the photos, and this could take as many as 20,000 images before the computer starts to make trustworthy decisions. Someone would then have to continue to oversee the computer as it learns.
Another area in which AI could help insurers is through the use of drones. These could be used to assess damage in certain circumstances and determine the level of repairs needed. This would enable quicker assessments following a first notification of loss which would speed up the overall claims process as a result.
Customers are most likely to encounter chatbots first in terms of AI in the insurance industry. Things like policy wordings and other important documents will be uploaded on these machines so that customers can ask specific questions and get answers in real-time 24/7. More complex questions will still be diverted to trained call handlers. Overall, this should improve the customer experience significantly.
Source Telegraph
