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Life insurance is on the cusp of a new chapter in reinvention. Until now, insurers have been gradually moving forward with a large-scale digital transformation. But with the impacts of AI, including generative AI, change is happening rapidly. We are in a vibrant new year and life insurers are beginning to accelerate and implement their reinvention strategies. This is the time to be bold.
These subscription predictions offer insight into how operators can take steps to become truly digital this year.
Generative AI brings a higher level of customer centricity
Customer-centricity powered by generative AI will further close the gap between operators and customers to deliver more personalized product and service offerings. This trend will continue to reach new levels in the coming year as new technologies enable deeper connections between clients, advisors and traders. Recent Accenture research found that today’s clients feel the need for protection in areas beyond what traditional insurance offers. For example, the next generation of insurance customers say they feel less protected when it comes to their mental health. To address these concerns and more, guidance from an advisor is key. However, insurers have not been able to offer that level of customer experience until now.
Generative AI extends the care and knowledge of hyper-personalized solutions to more people. Digital agents, diverse chat capabilities, ask-me-anything capabilities, and the evolution of enterprise-level generative AI solutions are rapidly closing existing gaps within the client-advisor-operator framework in the industry, and this is only in the initial stages.
In last year’s predictions, I highlighted how new levels of artificial intelligence and automation capabilities would improve real-time underwriting decisions and enable a faster digital shopping experience. We believe this trend will continue this year as well as more and more life insurers begin to implement strategies.
The development of generative AI underwriting tools in 2023 that work to improve the efficiency and accuracy of underwriting and risk management, as well as optimize processes and generate valuable insights, is worth monitoring. This technology, often referred to as insurance co-pilot at Accenture, will play an even more important role in 2024 as it continues to be refined with advances in LLM.
I want to make it clear that new technologies will not replace advisors. These technologies are necessary as insurers continue to face skilled labor shortages across the insurance value chain. Solutions that are more personal and personalized work to address a different type of skills shortage. With the insurance retirement crisis still on the horizon, collaboration between humans and machines will be even more crucial as we look for new ways to support employees in core business functions, both underwriting and claims.
To share a recent, concrete industry implementation, Accenture helped a large insurer A&H automate its claims process by using advanced voice AI, AI-powered human assistance capabilities, a digital virtual assistant, and proactive multi-track travel. days. The journeys involved two-way messaging linked to an event that helped complete a customer’s request in the same channel for a more seamless experience while the AI-powered assistant worked to provide real-time AI-based guidance to agents during conversations with customers.
Digitalization will accelerate to begin the journey of reinvention
Life insurers may tout digital underwriting processes and aspirations, but many are still stuck in analogue operations. Carriers have been paper-based businesses with paper-based processes, and this remains the foundation of business as today’s paper takes the form of PDF, Excel, and Adobe files. But in 2024, true digitalization and the transition to real-time data will be more achievable than ever if operators have the imagination and leadership to begin the journey of reinvention.
The reinvention will be about making life insurance truly digital from end to end, transitioning everything in your business to real-time data. From improving your claims core and engagement system to improving insurer workflow, once the information is data, there are many ways to rewrite processes. And the benefits are there, including cost savings, acceptance, and many more. While I don’t think this is the year to complete the total reinvention, it is the year to begin your journey by focusing on parts of your business to reinvent.
I would recommend taking inspiration from one of today’s industry transformational leaders. Ping An launched a pilot digital solution to improve agent planning, increase sales performance and improve its life insurance business. This pilot resulted in a 30% development time reduction and a 25% service reuse rate.
Now is the time to move on experimentation to implementation
To begin any journey requires action. Several life insurers will take important steps in their digital journeys this year by going beyond proof of concept to implement the transformative tools and mature technologies available today.
Entering the implementation phase will drive business transformation, impacting everything from the underwriting and claims experience to the customer experience and more. As a growing technology area in insurance, smart ingestion (the ability to digitally ingest data) offers incredible advantages as a starting point for this phase.
As a final thought for this blog post, another notable development to keep an eye on is the emergence of comprehensive beneficiary care services as a distinctive value proposition for new product sales, a topic I will explore further in my next blog. . Stay tuned.
Let’s talk about implementing initiatives for your reinvention journey.
Also, check out Accenture’s new generative AI studio network.
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Disclaimer: This content is provided for general information purposes and is not intended to be used in lieu of consulting with our professional advisors.
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