Revolutionising claims handling and fraud detection with AI

Artificial Intelligence has infiltrated every other business sector, so it’s only a matter of time before insurers reap the benefits, according to Stephanie Steel, product manager at insurtech start-up Shift Technology.

Shift Technology is one of more than 20 founders discussing the market at the annual Intelligent InsurTECH conference on October 3 in London. Click here to find out more.

The start-up was founded by Jeremy Jawish after he interned at a large global insurer in the fraud department with his future co-founder and chief scientific officer Eric Sibony.

“They saw an opportunity to bring AI to fraud detection and revolutionise claim handling,” said Steel.

He explains that, while other fraud analytics also offer rudimentary claims scoring, Shift Technology goes beyond simply providing probability of risk. “It furnishes clear, actionable insights on which indicators make the claim suspect,” she said.

Steel explained that depending on the circumstances surrounding the claim, the context-sensitive model can intelligently increase (or decrease) the weight of suspicious indicators and when necessary, provide a framework to detect fraudulent networks.

Although AI has been promised as problem-solver, it has also sparked worries about job losses.

In January, Japanese insurer Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance announced that it would replace more than 30 employees with an AI system.

“We are aware that many people are scared about losing their jobs but at Shift we believe that bringing AI will allow employees to focus on more interesting assignments and bring a more customer-centric approach to handling claims,” said the product manager.

The idea behind Shift Technology is not to replace the human fraud handler, but replicate his or her deductive reasoning and apply it on a large scale.

According to Steel, fraud teams and adjustors are “professionals and do an excellent job of detecting fraud”.

However, AI is better in terms of the volume of fraud it can detect and the capacity for network detection.

“With over 90 million P&C claims analysed and myriad alerts evaluated and classified by fraud handlers, Shift’s AI benefits from a vast data supply and industry expertise rendering Force increasingly powerful with time.”

Shift Technology has high aims—the start-up founders want to the company to be the leading global provider of insurance fraud detection solutions.

Steel added that the start-up plans to successfully launch an end-to-end claims automation solution.

“From the filing of a claim to the policyholder payout, AI will be present every step of the way, reducing end-to-end handling time from weeks to minutes,” she concluded.

Shift Technology is one of more than 20 insurtech startups attending Intelligent Insurer’s Intelligent InsurTECH conference on October 3 in London. Click  here to find out more.