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The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home to insurers the vital importance of staying close to their customers. They need to quickly detect the changing needs of policyholders and promptly deliver solutions tailored to meet their new circumstances. 

At this year’s Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards a variety of carriers, intermediaries and insurtech firms displayed solutions designed to build close relations with customers. Many of these solutions deployed artificial intelligence (AI) on a big scale to identify the changing requirements of policyholders, propose more suitable risk management offerings or speed up responses to customer requests.

Many insurance firms are implementing AI at scale

Initiatives to close the gap between insurers and their customers were not limited to personal lines applications. Several submissions sought to strengthen ties between insurers and commercial lines customers through, among other things, forums for collaboration and innovation. 

Here are some of the smart innovations that use AI to help insurers better understand and serve their customers. 

• MS1 Brain: Developed by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance in Japan, the MS1 Brain platform combines AI and big data technologies to better equip sales agents to meet the needs of their customers. By gathering and analyzing information about customers and their requirements and then identifying the products that best address their needs, MS1 Brain enables agents to foster closer ties with prospective policyholders. This enhances the customer experience and also increases the productivity of sales agents.
• EME Virtual Assistant: Mutua Madrilen͂a in Spain has enhanced substantially its customer service operations by developing an intelligent virtual assistant that helps aids its support staff. The EME virtual assistant can respond to queries on nearly a thousand different topics in either text or voice messages. Built on the Google cloud platform and incorporating natural language processing and chatbot communications, the virtual assistant enables the insurer to respond quickly and efficiently to customer enquiries 24 hours a day. 

• AI-Augmented claims: Compensa Poland, part of the Vienna Insurance Group (VIG), has enhanced the customer experience it provides by introducing a digital self-service claims-handling solution. As well as an intelligent user-interface, which guides customers when making a claim, the solution employs advanced data analytics to automatically process claims from the first notification of loss through to smart claims segmentation, routing, assessment, settlement and finally to adjusting claims reserves.

Commercial lines providers are becoming risk management companies

Several insurers at this year’s awards displayed innovations that carriers had developed to help commercial lines customers better manage their exposure to risk. These initiatives are part of widespread transformation that is sweeping the commercial lines business. Many of the carriers that serve this sector are becoming providers of a broad range of risk management services. They’re no longer limiting themselves to traditional insurance offerings.  

These three innovations show how commercial lines providers are looking for new ways to meet the needs of their customers. 

• Worldview: Developed by Chubb in the US, Worldview is a digital platform that allows the company’s brokers and customers to manage in real-time all their risk management and insurance needs across the globe. It handles the issuing of policies, electronic transfer of documents, claims reporting and assessment and the delivery of invoices. Key features include interactive data visualization, seamless collaboration tools and AI-powered contract translation. 

• Bold Penguin Exchange: US insurtech firm Bold Penguin has built a digital exchange that connects small businesses with insurance agents and carriers. Bold Penguin’s advanced analytics system consolidates the question-sets of the many insurers on its exchange into a single standard format. Using application programing interfaces (APIs), the company quickly matches businesses with the products and services that best meet their needs. 
• Cube: AXA XL in the UK has taken a clever approach to helping its commercial lines customers develop new risk management solutions. Together with consulting firm Ninety, it has created Cube, a six-week incubator program, which enables risk managers to work alongside AXA XL specialists to develop solutions to manage their most complex risks. Participants begin in the Cube program without preset objectives but follow an innovative partnership methodology developed by AXA XL to identify and create risk-management solutions. 

For further information about the Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards click on the link below. It provides information about a host of impressive innovations. Don’t delay in getting your submissions ready for next year’s awards.  

Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards

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