Mindset key to leveraging genAI and digital twins
Re/insurers need to embrace a positive mindset when exploring how generative AI (genAI) and digital twins can support future innovation in the industry, according to Susan Fallon, global head of property at Zurich.
Her comments came as she spoke at the Intelligent Insurer Commercial Lines Innovation Europe 2023 conference in London.
In her session, titled ‘Harness genAI and digital twins for future risk thinking’, she discussed the powerful synergy between genAI and digital twins, and their potential to revolutionise future risk thinking and decision-making.
Fallon said the insurer was really just starting on its journey with genAI and was thinking about how Zurich will build that into its processes.
“To use genAI, you have to get things moved into cloud based [systems] and do housekeeping work with infrastructure to get to a spot where we can use genAI techniques more.”
She explained that her work over the past couple of years has been about building foundational analytics and bringing together lots of different data points in readiness for further AI advances. “We’ve built in and automated some of the lower complex business processes in terms of data. We were building infrastructure, then looking at our customers and partners and building connections.”
However, genAI has already shown real potential, she said, explaining that it can “act as an assistant to many areas” including for claims professionals and engineers.
“It helps us to get underneath a topic. We were quite surprised how quickly we can get to certain topics,” she added.
Where genAI can come in is to take some of that mundane work and develop it centrally. “By doing this we don’t have to keep asking for the same data and we can focus on key issues rather than scrubbing data.
In terms of digital twins, which involve building a digital version of a building and running various risk scenarios with it, she said this also showed huge potential for the future. You need a lot of data to do this kind of analysis and, perhaps surprisingly, Fallon said the insurer was finding a great willingness from customers to share risk data.
This kind of data rich insight is valuable because the more that is understood about the evolving risk and the more that risk is protected, the better Zurich can determine how much capacity to deploy and how to adjust pricing, she said.
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