Nail the technology basics, says conference panel

Getting the basics right is vitally important as insurance technology accelerates, according to a panel of industry experts at the Intelligent Automation in Insurance: unlocking the artificial intelligence revolution conference, taking place in London today.

Chaired by Michael Donnellan, executive business process services leader at DXC Technology, the session, ‘Getting the basics right: design thinking and re-imagining your process’, highlighted that technological change is already here and can no longer be viewed as something to be dealt with in the future.

Nicolas Levillain, head of data science and insights, EXIN Group, said his company was trying to eliminate duplication of effort, such as rekeying information multiple times. He said that technology now meant that claims approval was now more efficient, going from two weeks to one day. Artificial intelligence was helping with this, looking at the urgency of claims settlement and helping to detect if someone is lying on a claim.

Laurent Montador, deputy chief executive officer of CCR and CCR Re, said that for organisations like his the value change was slightly different, due to the nature of reinsurers. However he too said that technology had driven a change, from information being stored in silos to being spread more throughout the company.

He added that it was also helping with the creation of models, analysing satellite pictures of damage that are used to gauge extent of hurricane damage, and enabling a quicker reaction to claims from natural disasters.

Kevin Baughan, deputy chief executive, Innovate UK, said that the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet. In areas such as healthcare, technology was helping companies to absorb millions of documents and come up with varying degrees of practicality in solutions, some including a totally new approach. Innovate UK puts together collaborations and the company is about to announce a programme of partnerships in new areas of thinking, he said.

Finally, Steven Haasz, global chief operating officer, AXA Corporate Solutions, spoke of the need to be careful, saying that the focus should be on the client and not on the technology. There have been a lot of clever initiatives, but have they benefited clients and done so quickly?

A further challenge was the need to deliver services for clients, but also to make sure that the workforce benefits from technology at the same time, he concluded.

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