#eila2024: How AI can change the insurance market
Within the framework of the Evolution Insurtech Latam 2024, industry executives gave their vision and how this technology can be used to improve sales and customer relationships.
There's no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic. The technology is being applied in various fields and businesses, and the insurance sector is no stranger to this. It was one of the topics discussed on the second day of Eila2024.
In a panel where executives from companies where AI is already beginning to be used participated, they discussed its implications and the true dimension of its usefulness. Principally, everyone agreed that it is not a magic solution and the key is to be clear about what its objective will be.
"Artificial intelligence is much more than ChatGTP-4," stated Sebastian Schuner, regional business development consultant at Sonda. The executive emphasized that technology needs to be taken beyond that, turning AI into the operational center, the brain of the company.
Artificial intelligence is much more than ChatGPT-4.
Sebastián Schuner, Regional Consultant for Business Development at Sonda
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In the same vein, Ricardo Seguel, CTO of Lisa Insurtech, a startup that precisely uses AI to automate processes in insurance companies, emphasized that this technology is not magic, on the contrary, the key is to determine what question I want to answer with AI, that is, to define what I want to use this tool for.
"What we have today are high expectations," agrees Francisco Domínguez, digital and operations manager of Vida Cámara, a health and life insurance company of the Chilean Chamber of Construction, who also maintained that before implementing the use of AI in a company, "we need to understand the problem we want to solve."
Practical Applications of AI.
But what practical applications can artificial intelligence have in the insurance market? Executives give several examples, from selling policies, analyzing scenarios to offer better products, and accelerating payments in the event of claims.
In the first case, it could be used to not miss out on opportunities. " Imagine an insurance company with a call center that sells cancer insurance, but also vehicle insurance. An executive who only sees cancer insurance receives a call from a person about vehicle insurance and that executive, by not selling that product, loses a customer. Artificial intelligence could listen to that and direct the customer to the right person", Schuner exemplifies.
Meanwhile, the CTO of Lisa Insurtech suggests that AI can be used to improve insurance offers through training the technology. Through machine learning, future behavior or scenarios can be predicted. "Simulate scenarios to determine which is the best product," Seguel explains.
Through machine learning, it is possible to predict future behavior or scenarios. Simulate scenarios to determine which is the best product.
Ricardo Seguel, CTO of Lisa Insurtech.
If they ever suffered a disaster and had to resort to their insurance, they likely had to provide explanations, submitting the evidence to make effective the contracted coverage. In this regard, Seguel indicates that AI can be used to properly define the scale of the situation. "Evidence (of the disaster) like images can be uploaded, and the AI can be asked what it sees in the image. If it is a fire, it should tell me, if it sees burnt objects", he notes. He adds that this would also imply a savings of time and resources for the companies, since the processing of data analysis would be much faster and with it, eventually, the payment or reimbursement of the policy would be more expedited.
Returning to the process of insurance marketing, from Vida Cámara they commented on the use they are already analyzing to give to AI, through tests with some of their technological partners, for example when offering a product. "In a telephone sale, you can pass those audios through AI to know if that sale was correct, if the correct information was delivered", exemplifies Domínguez.
Precautions.
If at the beginning the executives stressed that artificial intelligence is not the perfect solution for everything, they also emphasized that both those who create solutions based on this technology and the companies that want to implement it must take their precautions.
Speaking from his experience as a startup, Lisa's CTO advises those innovating with AI to have a robust proposal that is a real solution to the industry they wish to impact. "There are very nice demos, but when you connect them in the production environment, they break", he asserts.
Another aspect is adapting the company and its collaborators at the time of adopting these types of disruptive solutions. Taking measures such as "preparing the workers to face AI" is part of the process, underlines Schuner, adding that the correct incorporation of technology "is not achieved without a cultural transformation" within the companies.