Industry must up its data game to benefit from generative AI
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) will play “a crucial role” in the transformation of the insurance sector, according to Isabelle Clausner (pictured), vice-president, client executive of Southern Europe at Xceedance.
The impact that this technology will have on the industry has been a big talking point this year, and Clausner said that one of the challenges when it comes to AI is that people talk so much about data that they sometimes forget what problems they are trying to solve and whether technology is the right solution.
“Having high quality data is essential.” Isabelle Clausner, Xceedance“We’ve come across many examples where the companies are looking to jump on the technology solution, but they should have fixed their processes first,” she said.
“Defining the goals and the objective for adoption of technology is key. One of the key challenges that insurers, reinsurers, managing general agents and brokers need to have in mind before they go down the route of AI, and particularly generative AI, is data.”
Having high quality data is essential, she said, and companies need to focus on the accuracy and completeness of data, particularly across their legacy systems.
“We’re already seeing some differences in data quality and consistency across the value chain,” she continued, and added that “a lot more is needed” despite the positive trend.
Companies looking to make use of AI need to be aware of the ethical and regulatory issues surrounding it, Clausner added.
“There’s a lot of work and regulation being driven by the various states and the EU but it’s about making sure that the data used for training AI models is representative and unbiased and that the data is transparent and can be explained to the customer and to the regulators,” she said.
According to Clausner, it is important for businesses to bring more transparency into the process and to partner with a technology provider that understands the re/insurance market.
“A lot of resistance to digital transformation is linked to this regulatory issue and bringing more transparency into this will help,” she said.
Looking at Xceedance specifically, and the impact that AI is having on the company, she said that the business is “taking the lead on the rise of generative AI” and has started to run experiments in a “wide range of areas within the insurance lifecycle”. This includes areas such as submission management, submission triaging, risk assessment, portfolio management, finance, accounting and claims.
“We have teams with a lot of expertise in this domain and we’re working internally, creating awareness and upskilling our teammates across the organisations,” she added.
Clausner detailed that the experiments have yielded interesting results, where tasks that would have normally taken hours to complete, such as going through reports to identify relevant information that an underwriter needs, can be completed in seconds using generative AI.
The experiments have highlighted the importance of the team’s insurance expertise, she said.
She added: “Our expertise in insurance allows us efficiently to ask the right questions to the large language model to obtain a precise and accurate output.”
Clausner predicted that the increasingly competitive environment when it comes to technology will result in wider changes in the insurance industry, and stated that a reshuffle of some leadership positions is likely.
“It will be a challenge for some players, but an opportunity for others, and AI will be an opportunity for the industry as a whole,” she concluded.
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