Page 16 - July2017

How and Why More Insurers Are

Turning to Bots

As more bots handle claims and perform underwriting Claims Application
tasks, should human employees be concerned? Human In claims, insurers are considering bots from first notice
industry experts say there’s no need to worry. of loss through payment. PointSource works with insurers
to examine issues that may occur during the process to
Insurers in the U.S. and overseas are exploring the use of try and resolve them. In claims, the company is working
chatbots in their operations. According to Dawn Mortimer, with insurers to evaluate all of the hand-offs steps that
assistant vice president, IoT/Telematics Claims Product occur during the claims process. Cammarata said that of
Management for Verisk Insurance Solutions, insurers are the insurers he’s worked with, 60 percent of the calls they
looking to adopt artificial intelligence more and more, with receive relate to the status of a claim.
bots doing some of the decision-making.
“They just simply want to know…the status and if they
Geico’s new mobile virtual assistant, Kate, can answer should be doing anything,” he said.
questions about policy coverages and offer billing
information. SPIXII sells motor insurance policies via a Cammarata said chatbots can be leveraged to increase
chatbot in a few European Union countries. Lemonade employee productivity, answering questions so the human
offers two chatbots, Maya underwrites policies while Jim adjuster can concentrate on more complex matters.
handles contents claims.
In a March 2017 blog, Donald Light, the director of
“We’re seeing a lot of insurers really asking us to help Celent’s North American P/C Practice, highlighted a few
make sense of the technology and find the application to ways adjuster bots could be utilized to process auto claims.
the insurance value chain,” said John Cammarata, vice
president of development at PointSource, a design and Bots could connect to the electronic control units (ECUs) in
development firm headquartered in North Carolina that connected cars and transmit information after an accident
focuses on digital transformation. “They hear a lot and see to an insurer. The ECUs monitor diagnostics of virtually
a lot around chatbots, but they don’t necessarily know how every major system in a car, he said. Some manufacturers
to apply that technology.” are already installing cell phone modems in cars, he
added. This allows instant communication between a bot
The company aids insurers by either working with them and the car.
through an eight-step digital transformation framework
or by helping with just a few of the steps. Some of the “It can open a line of communication with the driver
stages of the digital transformation framework include directly. If there’s an indication that airbags have been
strategy, architecture, experience, process and culture deployed, it can notify police and/or medical assistance,”
transformation deployment. he said. In addition, an initial repair estimate and contact
with a direct repair program could be initiated.
Typically, insurers will leverage vendors and outsource
the technology. Cammarata suggests insurers look to He said the bot could communicate with the policyholder
competitors to see how they are using bots. He said or claimant via a video that is made specifically for the
insurers are encouraged to examine patterns within their event. It could provide necessary information on the claim
insurance value chains where chatbots could be used, and provide information for an auto repair facility.
such as serving up quick quotes for sales and distribution,
providing a natural language interface to answer policy Light said it’s likely that once adjuster bots handle auto
questions and for processing payments. claims, property claims will soon follow.

Most of the interest is coming from personal lines insurers, Though bots may increase claim closures boosting
Cammarata said. Homeowner’s insurers are especially department efficiency, Light doesn’t see an army of bots
interested in virtual assistant patterns because their replacing human adjusters anytime soon. He sees bots
current digital experience is not meeting their customer handling first notice of loss claims, while adjusters will still
expectations. He said a chatbot could walk a customer be needed to handle injury claims. In addition, he said, the
through policy questions all the way to policy issuance. information contained within an ECU could be ambiguous
or rendered useless due to a crash requiring a human
adjuster to step in to handle the claim.

16 insight july 2017