AI has been the buzzword in IT for several years now. Although this technology has contributed substantially to certain aspects of IT such as robotics and image analysis, it has a long way to go in business applications, particularly in insurance where these technologies are approached with caution.

The next five years will see a large number of applications of AI getting accepted in the insurance industry. Here are a few that are already being used.

Insurance salespersons, especially in life insurance, need to spend quite some time with a customer explaining products and their benefits and quite often the customer, after numerous and lengthy discussions, either defers a buying decision to a later date or is just undecided and wants to take more time. This often depends on the nature of the customer - whether he or she is decisive, hesitant, aggressive, etc. Typically a customer who is sure of what he or she wants and is decisive is more likely to make a purchase than one who is hesitant by nature. Tools are available that use AI and ML to scan through social media postings made by the customers to determine whether they are more likely to make a purchase decision or not. If a customer has multiple customer prospects, these tools can classify the customers in order of buying propensity along with their general profile so that the salesperson can use this information to target those prospects that are more likely to buy first and also be able to build a sales strategy to sell to the prospects - and all of this based entirely on publicly available information on a person.

The next five years will see a large number of applications of AI getting accepted in the insurance industry. Here are a few that are already being used.

Applications for insurance products sometimes need to be accompanied by supporting documents, such as a copy of a driving license or an identity card or an income tax return, etc. These documents are basically used to confirm the information provided by the client in the application form and this verification often needs to be done manually. Tools, based on AI, are now available to extract data from images of the supporting documents, first determine whether the documents are genuine, and then determine the significance of the data and finally verify the data with information provided by the customer in the application form. Such tools are not expected to entirely remove the need for manual checking, however, they can reduce the manual effort by as much as 75%, thus reducing the load on the underwriting staff in the back-office.

The next five years will see a large number of applications of AI getting accepted in the insurance industry. Here are a few that are already being used.