AI in Insurance: Navigating Benefit and Opportunities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become integral for recognizing and optimizing internal and customer-centric operations in various industries. The insurance industry, often considered conservative in adopting new technologies, is slowly embracing AI solutions such as Generative AI. AI solutions for insurance sketch a world of opportunities by streamlining processes using automation.

A survey conducted by Sprout.AI revealed that 59% of insurers in the UK and the US have already implemented generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT. Generative AI works wonders for the insurance sector by fundamentally reshaping processes such as underwriting and risk assessment to claims processing and customer service.

You can see a future where AI becomes so ubiquitous that companies no longer market themselves as ‘AI companies’ because they’ve all become AI companies.

-Barron’s
Cathy Gao
Partner, Sapphire Ventures

Generative AI, evident from the name, suggests that it generates content. It’s designed to learn from input data, allowing it to produce original content, such as text, images, and even music.

Models such as GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 can potentially improve insurance operations in four key ways:

• Summarizing policies and documents
• Creating new content
• Responding to queries and providing answers
• Translating languages and code

Generative AI can highly contribute to the insurance industry but only has noticeable downsides if implemented following the proper practices. Let’s explore the advantages of incorporating insurance AI while delving into the obstacles it faces and potential solutions for its implementation.

The Advantages of AI in Insurance

Many business areas within the insurance industry can be revolutionized by leveraging Generative AI for various customer- and employee-related processes. Here are some evident benefits observed by insurers.

1. Increased Productivity

Insurance companies are leaning on AI solutions to boost efficiency for industry knowledge workers such as claims adjusters, actuaries, underwriters, and engineers. A significant benefit of gen AI is that it can summarize and synthesize vast data collected through the claims lifecycle, i.e., from call transcripts to legal and medical documentation.

Additionally, insurers can expedite claims processing with swift analysis of photos and policies. Life insurance, significantly, is enhancing decision-making using AI-driven automation. This results in insurers issuing policies to a broader customer base without conducting in-person examinations.

2. Cost Savings

Generative AI can sift through historical claims data, customer information, and supplementary variables such as weather and economic trends. Doing so can help insurers identify and price risks more precisely, reducing losses and improving profitability. Furthermore, AI facilitates real-time risk alerts and recommendations to policyholders, helping them take measures to avoid accidents or losses. This proactive approach helps reduce the number of claims and associated costs.

3. Enhanced Customer Experiences

Integration of AI can foster personalized and empathetic interactions, enhancing overall customer, agent, and staff experiences. It automates mundane tasks, allowing insurance professionals to focus on high-value tasks. Additionally, AI-driven insights can streamline operations and fuel innovation to develop new products. Notably, generative AI is reimagining customer service and product development approaches.

4. Addressing Compliance and Risk Management

AI solutions tailored for the insurance sector can continually monitor and ensure compliance with changing regulatory requirements. Furthermore, these AI systems can generate content through training materials and interactive modules for staff to stay updated with the latest regulatory developments in areas the company is actively exploring.

Current State of Generative AI Adoption in Insurance

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and every industry is keeping an eye out for introducing the opportunities presented by this cutting-edge technology. In April 2023, Sprout.AI conducted a survey to learn the attitudes, opportunities, and challenges surrounding generative AI in insurance.

Here are the findings observed in this survey.

• In insurance companies, compared to employees in junior positions(18%), individuals with middle manager designations (62%) and above are more likely to use generative AI technologies.
• In the UK, 27% of insurers have integrated Generative AI, while the US adoption rate is 40%. There are many reasons for this noticeable difference, attributed to differing risk appetites and the UK’s emphasis on environmental, social, and governance measures.
• When questioned about how their customers responded to the adoption of generative AI, it was observed that 47% of respondents in the UK and 55% in the US expressed favorable attitudes.

These figures ensure that consumers are aware of generative AI and receptive to its capabilities, making it a potential future expectation from their insurance providers.

Opportunities and Benefits of Generative AI

One of the most prevailing notions with Generative AI is that it’s primarily used for generating human-like text using tools such as ChatGPT. On the contrary, its capabilities go much further than what meets the eye.

Here are some of the use cases of generative AI for insurance.

1. Customized Marketing

Gen AI can be best leveraged to create custom campaigns by extracting data from prospective customer data. Generative AI is extremely good at segregating data based on demographics, online buying patterns, purchase history, and more. It can segment potential customers and devise personalized marketing campaigns using the same.

2. Streamline Claims Processing

AI can efficiently handle tasks like data entry, analyzing claims, and identifying new claims with similar patterns. It can also summarize wordy documents and organize claims by priority. This could automate the workflow for claims processing while reducing the time and cost of processing them.

3. Improved Underwriting

Generative AI can aid underwriters in identifying essential documents and extracting data, thus giving them more time to conduct strategic tasks. It also automates the data calls management structure, allowing more efficient time management.

4. Customer Onboarding

AI can efficiently verify customer documents such as IDs, passports, and utility bills. It even offers the capability to extract relevant information from these documents. Thus saving time for both employees and customers.

Read the full article: Navigating Challenges and Solutions While Implementing AI in Insurance