In the first half of 2024, we attended several conferences to discuss about the expectations and needs of the insurance industry concerning business priorities and new technologies. Two terms consistently dominated the discussions: AI and resilience.
On one hand, artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, has become an indispensable technology from which insurers hope to gain competitive advantages. The once-threatening image of AI as a replacement for humans has now transformed into that of a helpful assistant, welcomed by the workforce as a valuable support in daily office tasks.
On the other hand, the increased occurrence of unpredictable macroeconomic or sociopolitical events (such as Covid-19, inflation, and the war in Ukraine) introduces dangerous instability to the markets, significantly complicating the assessment and calculation of risks for insurers.
This leads to a frequently heard desire for resilience among insurance top executives: it is essential to introduce resilience within the organization by establishing stable processes that can withstand changing conditions. It is also crucial to build resilience among employees by offering cross-functional collaboration platforms, extensive training programs, and innovative ways of working.
However, how closely intertwined both terms – AI and resilience – are remains to be explored. So far, most insurance companies have primarily focused on investments in established technologies with proven results, neglecting innovative but riskier IT investments. Yet, only the latter enables performance leaps that lead to a competitive advantage in the long run.
This can be illustrated well with the following example: Nowadays, the automated processing of claims is a no-brainer, meaning it no longer provides a competitive advantage, as most insurers have already accelerated and simplified this process with AI software.
But what about technologies that support employees in delivering services efficiently and promptly, going beyond simple underwriting, customer service, or claims processing platforms?
For example, everyday tasks could be supported by systems that display a summary of the most important data on the employee’s screen, including recommendations for the next best action or automatic initiation of a workflow. Equally conceivable and relatively easy to implement are tools that use natural language processing to identify similar cases and generate suggested solutions for employees. In the field of compliance, advanced AI can enable the comparison of thousands of policies at the touch of a button, regardless of the language. This way, discrepancies between local versions and master policies could be detected early, minimizing risks.
The USA is known to be a pioneer in the adoption of AI technologies. The insurance industry is no exception. European insurers can observe which work processes are already being successfully automated with AI in the US without any great risk and thus gain a competitive advantage in the European market.
Be inspired by these six use cases that go beyond the European standard and contact us to find out how this can be applied to your business processes.
