Life insurance is on the cusp of a new chapter of reinvention. Until now, insurance companies have gradually undertaken large-scale digital transformations. However, change is occurring rapidly due to the impact of AI, including generative AI. We are entering an exciting new year, and life insurance companies are beginning to accelerate their reinvention strategies. Now is the time to be bold.
These underwriting forecasts provide insight into what actions carriers can take to become truly digital this year.
Generative AI brings next level customer centricity
Customer centricity powered by generative AI will further narrow the gap between carriers and customers to deliver more personalized products and services. This trend will continue to reach new levels as new technologies enable deeper connections between customers, advisors, and carriers.According to a recent Accenture study, today’s Customers feel the need for protection In areas beyond what traditional insurance provides. For example, the next generation of insurance customers say they feel they have insufficient protections for their mental health. Guidance from your advisor is important to address these concerns and more. However, until now, insurance companies have not been able to provide that level of customer experience.
Generative AI extends care and knowledge for hyper-personalized solutions to more people. Advances in digital agents, versatile chat capabilities, Ask Me Anything capabilities, and enterprise-grade generative AI solutions are rapidly filling existing gaps in the industry’s customer, advisor, and carrier frameworks. This is still in the early stages.
in Last year’s forecast, highlighted how new levels of AI and automation capabilities power real-time underwriting decisions and enable a faster digital buying experience. We believe this trend will continue this year as more life insurance companies begin implementation strategies.
In 2023, it’s worth monitoring the development of generative AI underwriting tools that improve the efficiency and accuracy of underwriting and risk management, streamline processes, and generate valuable insights. This technology, also known as Accenture’s Underwriter Co-Pilot, will play an even more powerful role in 2024 as it continues to be fine-tuned as LLMs advance.
We want to be clear that new technology does not replace advisors. These technologies are necessary as insurers continue to face skilled labor shortages across the insurance value chain. More personal and customized solutions address different types of skills shortages. Human-machine collaboration will become even more important as the retirement crisis in the insurance industry still looms and we seek new ways to support employees across core business functions, both underwriting and claims. It will be.
To share specific recent industry implementations, Accenture shares how a leading A&H insurer is using advanced voice AI, AI-powered human-assist capabilities, digital virtual assistants, and proactive multi-day travel. , helped automate the billing process. This journey includes two-way messaging tied to events that helps complete customer requests on the same channel for a smoother experience, while AI-powered assistants It worked to provide real-time AI-based guidance to agents during conversations.
Digitalization accelerates and the journey of reinvention begins
Life insurance companies may tout their digital underwriting processes and aspirations, but many are still stuck with analog operations. Freight forwarders have traditionally been paper-based companies with paper-based processes, and this continues to be the foundation of their business, even today when paper takes the form of his PDF, Excel and Adobe. But in 2024, carriers will be able to demonstrate imagination and leadership to truly digitize and transition to real-time data more than ever before. journey of reinvention.
This reinvention will truly digitize life insurance end-to-end, moving everything within the business to real-time data. From improving claims core and engagement systems to enhancing insurer workflows, there are many ways to rewrite processes once information becomes data. It also has many benefits such as cost savings and widespread use. I don’t believe this will be the year we complete a complete reinvention, but it is the year we start our journey with a focus on reinventing parts of our business.
We invite you to be inspired by one of the leaders transforming the industry today. peace has launched a pilot digital solution to enhance agency planning, improve sales performance and improve life insurance operations. As a result of this pilot, development time was reduced by his 30% and service reuse rate was reduced by his 25%.
It’s time to move on From experiment to implementation
Starting the journey requires action. Several life insurance companies plan to take a significant step in their digitalization efforts this year by moving beyond proof of concept and implementing innovative tools and mature technologies that are currently available.
The implementation phase drives business transformation, impacting everything from underwriting and claims operations to customer experience and beyond. As a growing technology field in the insurance field, intelligent intake (the ability to capture data digitally) provides an incredible advantage as a starting point for this phase.
As a final thought for this blog post, another noteworthy development to note is the emergence of comprehensive beneficiary care services as a distinct value proposition in new product sales. I will discuss this topic in more detail in my next blog. stay tuned.
Let’s talk About implementing initiatives towards a journey of reinvention.
Additionally, check out Accenture’s new generative network. AI studio.
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