Advances in Claims Technology

Results from Digital Insurance's survey of insurance carriers about the current state, trends and future of claims technology. We'll discuss first notice of loss (FNOL) solutions, automation during the claims process, speed and methods of payment, the changing consumer role in the claims process (e.g., taking pictures) and how insurers are leveraging technology to better predict losses and personalize responses to customers. 


Transcription:

Patricia L. Harman (00:07):
So our next panel is going to take a slightly different track. We're going to do a deep dive into the advances in claims technology. Digital insurance conducts multiple surveys on different topics throughout the year, and our most recent survey looked at how carriers are planning to invest in claims technology going forward. Now on this panel we'll have Janet King, who is our Vice President of Research for Digital Insurance, Ken Tolson, who is the Global President of Digital Solutions for Crawford. And Chris Bennett, Head of Strategy and Core Solutions for Origami Risk. So please help me welcome our next panel, or I wanted to start with an overview of who the respondents were for this particular survey. And 62% of them were either an upper management or at the executive level. We also had a number of different types of organizations that participated, and their company revenues, 66% of them had revenues in excess of $1 billion. 27% of them had revenues of around $10 million or more. So I wanted to ask you, Janet, based on the research that you've done, what were some of the key themes or responses that were an outcome of this survey?

Janet King (01:29):
Yeah, and thank you. Thank you Patty for having us and thank you both for joining us today. As Patty said, this is one of a number of research programs that we do every year. So this year we have six, and we did this one in partnership with Origami Risk. The full results actually will be published in a few weeks on digital insurance. So keep an eye on that space and you can download the full report. We actually surveyed a broader spectrum of folks in the insurance sector, but today we're mostly focusing on the results for the PNC carriers because they made up the bulk of the sample and they were, I think really, really critical to the response pool. But you had asked me what the themes were, right?

Patricia L. Harman (02:10):
I did.

Janet King (02:11):
So I think there were kind of three key themes that kind of came out of this research. And I think the first one is around the fact that claims is really now sitting at the top of the list of priorities for digital transformation for PNC carriers and others in the insurance. So that's number one. I think number two is around customers and the role that they're playing in the evolving claims landscape, and it's pretty significant and we've got some interesting data to share and I'm sure Ken and Chris will have lots of insights to add to that as well. And the third is around tech. So AI is certainly going to be a continued focus for investment as we move forward. And I loved the fact that our keynote this morning was AI is the new UI and how he talked about AI really being an additive to your technology stack. And I think that's true. I think AI and claims is going to be really critical to sort of advancing and evolving those digital experiences. Yeah,

Patricia L. Harman (03:10):
I think so too. You do a lot of research across a number of different verticals, but I was wondering, did any of the responses to this survey surprise you in any way?

Janet King (03:21):
It's a great question. I don't think there were any major aha moments, but certainly the research confirmed a lot of things that I think we're all seeing and feeling about claims and about the insurance sector in general. I think first again is how pivotal, that's an interesting word, how pivotal claims is to the customer experience and ongoing digital transformation across the industry. So claims is really right up there, as I said, and I don't really see claims as surpassing the customer experience, but more as driving that customer experience forward, right? It's going to be really important. It also highlights some interesting and important opportunities, I think, about the role of the customer in the process. So that quote again today, there's some great stuff in that keynote about any, the only thing changing faster than tech is customer expectations. I loved that. I thought that really resonated with me, and it's something that we really see in all of our research and certainly hear. One final insight that I thought was interesting is that most of the carriers really view their progress on claims management is really just simply keeping pace with their competitors. Not too many feel that they're leading the way. And I really think that underscores the complexity and the challenge of innovating and how hard it can be to innovate across all parts of the claims lifecycle, right? From communications to data collection, to claims investigation to authorization and payment tracking.

Patricia L. Harman (04:49):
Well, it's interesting because technology has transformed every aspect of the insurance ecosystem. And so when you look at it in its totality, it's amazing how far the industry has come, especially within the last couple of years. I think that the pandemic kind of accelerated a lot of the change that we've been able to see going forward. And Chris, I was wondering why did Origami risk want to partner with digital insurance on this research study?

Chris Bennett (05:17):
Well, it's a great question and what Janet just mentioned that was discussed this morning, the idea that technology is moving so fast, right? Insurance is not a fast moving industry historically, but technology is always changing. Customer expectations are always changing. As a software company serving the insurance industry, it's really important that we don't get caught up in what's new and cool and that we're actually focusing on solving the real world problems of our customers, of insurance carriers and of others in the insurance ecosystem. And we get a lot of anecdotal evidence from our clients, our client advisory boards and our large book of clients across the entire insurance sector. But beyond anecdotal evidence, it's really great to get data to say these are the things that are top of mind in the industry. These are the things that we need to be focusing on because it's another source of input for us and to how we prioritize the technology innovations that we're trying to bring to the market.

Patricia L. Harman (06:16):
So then why is this type of research really valuable then for you and your team?

Chris Bennett (06:22):
It helps us make data-driven decisions. So instead of guessing and saying this is new and would be cool, which certainly we have folks internally that want to play with new cool technology and have great ideas, this helps us figure out where do we really focus to drive value for our customers and meet them where they are, meet them where they need to be and where they want to go.

Patricia L. Harman (06:43):
And that's really a lot of what it comes down to is what do your customers want, what do they need? What are they expecting? So Janet, what did carriers identify as their top priorities then for the next 12 to 18 months?

Janet King (06:57):
So this chart's kind of showing you a slice of what people are thinking about across the industry at large. So we asked them to rank their top three priorities for digital transformation over the next 12 to 18 months. And you can see that customer service and claims are one in two with more than half of these folks, including the PNC carriers, highlighting those as key priorities followed by data management, marketing, product development that starts to fall off after that. I think what's noteworthy is if you break that view out PNC carriers versus other carriers versus agents and brokers, what you see is sort of that spike in prioritization for claims among PNC carriers. So customer service is number one for everyone else. Claims is number one by quite some distance for PNC, but again, I think they're really linked.

(07:52):
So one drives the other. So I think that's interesting. And then if you take a double click on that and really look at, especially for PNC carriers when they're thinking about improving their claims processes over the next 12 to 18 months, what are they prioritizing? What are they aiming for to make that happen? And what we saw is that automation, so really automating more aspects of the claims process was number one, followed closely by personalization, so really wanting to deliver that more personalized customer experience. Third is reducing time from first notice of loss to the initial payout decision. And then we had reducing cost of claims always key and making the process more transparent, which are all key kind of areas of focus for these carriers moving forward.

Patricia L. Harman (08:47):
So based on some of this feedback, does that confirm what you've been seeing? And Ken, I'll start with you on this first because you have a very unique perspective. You work with a lot of different carriers, you also work with their clients too. So I feel like that puts you in a very unique position to kind of see both sides of what's going on here.

Kenneth Tolson (09:08):
Yeah, it's really, well first, thanks for having me. It's super validating honestly, the assumptions we have, and we hear this from our clients all the time, which is the importance of the customer experience and being in a primarily a claims driven organization. We obviously think claims are very important, but I always say that claims are where the promise is kept for a carrier as well. So those two things to us, customer experience and claims, the claims experience is inseparable. So I was not surprised by the findings of the day. Like I said, it's validating to me and everything we've talked about here today from every session has really kind of supported where I think we've landed here, the importance of customer experience and it's where we spend all of our investment through automation without the expense of customer experience is the key. That's the battleground.

Patricia L. Harman (09:57):
Great. And Chris, you work directly with the customers, so then does this confirm what you're seeing as well?

Chris Bennett (10:04):
Oh, absolutely. When we think about what's concerning our customers, what we hear at market, certainly people are worried about costs, right? They're worried about driving down cost efficiency. They're worried about being able to deliver a better customer experience because every interaction that people have with modern tech in other areas of their life impacts their expectation from interacting with their insurance carrier. And they don't need that anymore than when they have a claim that is the most important time in the life cycle of that client with the carrier. So not surprising at all that those were the highest scoring themes.

Patricia L. Harman (10:44):
And your comment kind of leads right into my next question, which is we do hear a lot about how customer expectations have changed, especially given the increased use of technology across the entire insurance industry. So what did the research show for that, Janet?

Janet King (11:00):
Well, I think Chris made a really good point and that we all expect things to sort of mirror our best digital experience anywhere, not just within a specific vertical. Everyone wants the So-called Amazon experience, that sort of instant thing and claims is interesting because it's not an experience that people over and over again, hopefully, unless you're exceedingly unlucky, it's hopefully not something that you're doing all the time. So for a lot of people it may be the first time that they're interacting with claims technology from their insurer. And I think what this data showed, at least from the carrier perspective, remember this is a survey of your peers. It seems like they have a pretty solid understanding of how customer expectations have changed. And you can see the first thing that they think that has changed the most over the last two to three years is that customers expect more transparency throughout the claims process and they want those fully digital experiences.

(11:58):
So those were number one and two, but still 23% still said they also still kind of want a human in the loop in places. We had this interesting conversation the other day about when people first file the claim, the first notice of loss, and you're standing, somebody was saying, my daughter got in a car accident and she's crying and a lot of stuff is happening and I'm not thinking about loading my digital app and filing a claim. I'm calling somebody up and saying like, Hey, my kid just got in an accident and here's a picture and here's what's happening. So I think there's a balance to be had here and I'll be interested to see what everybody says, but with that in mind and understanding that there is a lot happening and the customer expectations are changing, I think it's interesting that when you ask carriers to report how well they're doing at keeping pace with those changing customer expectations, only 27% self-report is doing very well.

(12:54):
Kind of the rest are like why we're doing okay, we're kind of in the middle there. And I think that's important. And I think maybe the most important or interesting thing that I thought we saw here was that by empowering customers to be more actively involved in the overall claims experience, whether that's taking pictures or uploading information digitally, et cetera, PNC carriers at least are telling us that they're seeing some actual improvement in outcomes from that direct involvement. So it has reduced their cost, it has resulted in more transparency, it has reduced the time from first notice of loss to initial payout, and it has resulted in a better, more personalized customer experience, which if you remember, those were the things that they said they were aiming for overall in claims.

Patricia L. Harman (13:38):
So then I'm going to ask Ken, because he gets to see both sides here as more aspects of the customer experience become digitized, are you seeing changes in customer expectations and then how does that even change how services are delivered or how you even communicate with your customers and clients?

Kenneth Tolson (13:58):
Well, the beauty of the age that we live in now is there's so many tools and technologies that are available for us to use. That also creates a lot of complexity now as well. And with complexity comes the opportunity to lose your customer or to have a bad experience. JD Power shared some of that yesterday about the failure of the self-service inspection really drops off the customer SAT score when they have to send a person out to affect the inspection of a claim. So we spend a lot of time trying to get the triage process accurate so that we make the best decision. Without that degradation of performance and customer experience, you don't get any chances to get it right or get it wrong and then correct it. Now the beauty of it is that's where that human in loop is so important because judgment and empathy and all the things we've talked about here are still going to be human components.

(14:53):
We're just trying to build the best toolkit to facilitate that accelerated claim process itself. But the customer absolutely wants to participate, most do, and so you got to meet the customer where they want to be met. You got to design workflows and systems that can accommodate that user that wants an Amazon-like experience. They went through a digital binding experience and therefore they want a digital claim experience until they don't. And you got to be able to do both now. And that's the complexity that's really been introduced into the claims life cycle now is that there's lots of channels and with lots of channels comes complexity. So you've got to be able to manage that complexity elegantly so that they don't feel the pain of that technology implementation.

Patricia L. Harman (15:36):
And it still underscores the importance of the relationships because this industry has always been so relationship driven reminds me of doctors who if you have a good bedside manner, that is equally as important. And so again, just being able to relate to your customers and your clients. So Chris, from your perspective, how are customers adjusting to this more automated experience and more importantly, what should carriers keep in mind as they digitize much of their processes?

Chris Bennett (16:07):
It's a great question and part of the challenge and the answer is the customer can be different people. So depending on who the carrier's interacting with, and what I mean by that is they're bringing their own experiences. To your point about meeting them where they're at, you are going to have different customers, different claimants, different consumers that have very different expectations of this interaction. It is the nature of where we're at right now is some people want a very automated, I don't want to talk to a human at all. Others want somebody to get on the phone and make them feel better and know that they've got it and they're taking care of 'em. And so not losing sight of that. I think to your point and thinking through how do we give a multichannel experience to our customers to make sure that we're being as efficient as possible, we're giving them the tools to automate and to participate as much as they want, but that we're keeping in mind that that is not the journey every customer is going to want. You can't build a one size fits all because customers are going to want a different experience.

Patricia L. Harman (17:08):
Right. I'm so glad that you emphasize that it's not a one size fits all that. You really do have to look at it from that personalized perspective. So Janet, what did your research find then when it comes to the practices of insurers adopting technology to improve their claims processes?

Janet King (17:29):
Well, we see that carriers are doing a number of things to try to adopt the right people, the right processes, the right technologies to move the claims process forward. The biggest response, the most common response was enabling electronic payment of claims. 60% said that they're doing that. Another 56% are providing tools that allow claimants to track the progress of their claim throughout the process. And that nod again to transparency, 51% are using virtual inspections for property claims. There's been some really fascinating conversations on the last couple of days about drones and how people are using drones to inspect properties. And then 48% are texting policy holders to communicate about the claims process because if someone pointed out, especially younger insurance holders, they don't talk on the phone anymore. Someone said, I even have to text my kids to tell them I want to call them. So I could relate to that. That happens at my house too.

Patricia L. Harman (18:29):
Yes, very true. With the significant investments that carriers have made in various types of claims technology, what are their expectations then and when it comes to tech spending for the next year or so and where do they expect to invest the most money?

Janet King (18:49):
Yeah, I think what we're seeing is that the majority are expecting to increase their tech spending in support of their claims management process, at least at some level, right? So 70% said either significant or moderate increase in spend over the next 12 to 18 months, 25% are going to hold that spending flat. So that's pretty good. That's pretty optimistic and we're seeing continued investment and growth there. I think what this slide shows is where we can expect to see net new or accelerated in investment around technologies that carriers feel are most transformative for the industry. So the horizontal axis shows you the percent that identify that technology as being highly transformative. You can see artificial intelligence is off far off to the right along with digital communication tools and mobile apps, and then the vertical access shows you the percentage that are again, either net new users, they're making investments in these things for the first time or they're accelerating investment. And I think you can see that there's potential for more investment in certain areas.

Patricia L. Harman (19:55):
Yes, definitely lots of opportunities for them and just interesting in terms of where they're looking to spend their money and how they're planning over the next couple of months as opposed to years at this point in time. Absolutely. So Ken, you've been in claims for over 30 years. What have been some of the biggest technological advances you've seen in this space and why is investing in technology so important for carriers and the vendors who work with them?

Kenneth Tolson (20:25):
You mentioned it, you actually mentioned it just a few minutes ago about what happened during the covid lockdowns that we had, and you saw this before, that we were already experimenting in virtual inspections and trying to move to more self-service type of engagements, and that created just an accelerated demand curve for those type of products. So this whole self-service movement and the ability to engage the poly holder in the workflow of the claim itself has been a really big game changer. You've seen it in the auto space first. You're seeing it heavily used in the property on the PNC side, both sides of that in the property space now, which is really encouraging. So we've been spending a lot of effort around key partnerships around technology providers in that space, but just the insights at the desk that the carriers have now and the options they have on the network side for alternative inspections and alternative ways to gather field data from whether it's IOT or whether it's the connected car or it's what's coming, is that connected home, the idea that the home and the car are now talked to, really what is the FNOL process is what's coming.

(21:38):
So that's really an exciting sort of era that is coming now that we would really be able to take advantage of and honestly will help us actually, I think alter the curve in terms of risk mitigation and reduce severity, reduce frequency, which all the carriers are obviously interested in. I think somebody mentioned Hippo this morning. Hippo led with an initiative to put water sensors into homes and the challenge was getting people to embrace that sort of intrusion, but the result was discounted fees, discounted premium rates, and those things as that market matures and converges is going to be much more prevalent, you're going to see claim frequencies come down, you're going to see severity come down, which is good even though I'm in the claims industry, that's good for the industry and good for the consumer overall.

Patricia L. Harman (22:30):
Part of it I think is education of the consumers. And it's funny because when you hear about pushback for some of these sensors, I think, oh, they've never had a water damage. They have no idea how fast that water travels, how much damage it can do, and just like that. So

Kenneth Tolson (22:48):
I have to share, 37% of all property claims in the US are typically that's the average, are non weather water claims. So if you can slow that curve alone, the impact to the underwriting model is significant for sure. Yes,

Patricia L. Harman (23:01):
Definitely

Kenneth Tolson (23:02):
Not for the faint of heart though.

Patricia L. Harman (23:04):
No, not at all. Well, I've dried out a few buildings, so I have a little bit of experience with that. Chris, as you're working with carriers, there's certain areas where you're seeing where they want to expand their use of technology, and then what benefits do they anticipate if they do that?

Chris Bennett (23:22):
Well, it's interesting because the chart a couple slides ago that actually talks about the things they're thinking about, those are thematically almost precisely what we get asked about all the time. And these are the things that they're currently doing with us. Can we streamline and automate payments? Can we get money to the claimant faster? Because the more we can satisfy the claimant, the less likely we're going to have something that spirals out of control later. The quicker you can handle a claim, certainly getting the right information to the right person at the right time to streamline claim handling is something we get asked about all the time. People are constantly thinking about how can we be faster in our processing and getting the right information to the right person at the right time. We hear from a lot of our customers, they're dealing with challenges internally with claims in particular of hiring and retaining talent.

(24:16):
And so a lot of their experience adjusters as they move on age out, take other roles, there aren't as many to fill that funnel coming up. So they really have to use technology to get some of the noise out of the machine, the things that can be automated, let's automate them, get the right information to the right people. And then certainly AI is kind of a general theme is everywhere. We get asked about AI all the time, but we like to think about and filter that down to specific use cases. How is AI helping you and it's applying it? Can we better get the right information to the right person if we leverage AI than if we don't? Is there a use case to do that? Right now it's top of mind for everybody because they need to be able to explain to their up ladder, what are you doing with ai? How are we thinking about it? Everybody's tasked with this right now. We like to bring it back to those sort of real world business challenges they're trying to solve. Again, it goes to, we could do lots of really cool things, but if they're not going to use it, that's not helpful.

Patricia L. Harman (25:19):
That's true. One of the things I was wondering with because of the extensive use of technology everywhere, is there anything that concerns you as the insurance industry expands its use of technology? Ken, I'll ask you first and then Chris, if you want to chime in too, that'd be great.

Kenneth Tolson (25:40):
The main concern that I have, we actually have an AI council since you brought up ai. We have an AI council, and actually Sam and my colleague in the room here today, and I were in the first our meeting this month, just the other day before we came here. And we spent a lot of time about how do we safely, where's the data coming from? How do we partition the data, how do we protect our client's data? And as safely as we're going about this, it's the unintended consequences. It's the risk that you create. And we've heard it loud and clear here. I mean we ultimately, these engines and large language models we create and what we do with them, we're responsible for. And there will be no question litigation at some point in time around it. I was once told, if you have data worth stealing, someone is coming for it.

(26:27):
So the risk is what we don't foresee and as cautious as we are, so we're being very careful, but we're attacking and using AI in a couple of very specific use cases where we think we can have the most impact. But my concern is really the sort of what are we not prepared for? What are we, it's a whole new era of innovation that's going on because of what generative AI can do for us. And that's where, if I have any sleepless nights, that's where it comes from. It's being concerned about what we're not anticipating and in the reshaping of the landscape that comes from this. I left, I was in a forum not long ago where I planted this seed of, we think about how these tools make us better and faster and more accurate, but all we're doing is really slightly modifying the processes that we already have that may be manual today. And the seed I always like to plant is this is going to change the way we do things. We don't really know how claims will be processed in the future because of some of the capabilities these tools will reveal. And that's the piece. It is both exciting but also a little horrifying, a little terrifying.

Chris Bennett (27:38):
I would certainly echo that. We get concerned all the time. So as we roll out new AI use cases and features, we'll have clients asking for very specific things, they're all excited about it, and then you start to roll it out and they're like, whoa, wait, we can't actually use it. We love the idea, but this is just too risky because by nature, what is the insurance industry? We are here to mitigate risk and there is inherently risk in the state that we're in right now with ai. So that's one. But I would pivot another concern that I have as I think about the continued investment as we leverage ai more and more people start to feel safer with it, and we start automating more of these processes and we drive to true straight through processing of claims, we risk losing the human touch. And I just want us all to be cognizant of that as we think forward, that at the end of the day, and we all encounter this in our interaction with technology today, you call an automated phone system, sometimes that's great, you can get to the information you want very quickly, but if we think about the process of a claim, something bad has happened to somebody and sometimes they need a sympathetic year, they need, as you mentioned earlier, the human empathy.

(28:49):
And as an industry, I don't want us to lose sight of we are a people-centered business and we need to maintain that human contact.

Patricia L. Harman (28:57):
That's so true. So we've talked about what concerns you about the adoption of new technology, but let's look at the flip side. What excites you about the different types of technologies that are available and how they're being used? So Chris, I'll let you take that one first.

Chris Bennett (29:13):
So this is where it gets really cool, and certainly we live in an incredible time for possibilities. Generative AI. AI has been around for a while and we've seen the benefit of that, certainly machine learning predictive that have helped us and many carriers have already implemented these technologies to help sort through large volumes of data and to look for patterns that a human wouldn't think to look for, Hey, this is something that we need to pay attention to. So that's been around for a while. But the idea of generative AI where you don't have to have the structured data because one of the barriers to using the data for predictive is that you've got to have a very large normalized data set to be able to actually start to draw intelligence out of that data. And for me, what's exciting as I think about data in the insurance industry and the possibility of moving data, transforming data, making data-driven decisions in insurance AI and particularly generative AI, starts to reduce the need to have everything look and feel the same.

(30:14):
And so this is true across the entire insurance spectrum. It's true for claims, it's true for policies and getting exposure values in, it's true in the entire world of insurance. And I'm genuinely excited for that sort of next step where we don't have to worry so much about making sure everything's in the right format to start to draw insights. But that insights will be much easier to raise and surface and we'll get visibility into things that we would not have thought to write a report or a query for, right? Nobody would've thought to go look for this thing, and we don't have the model in place to do it for us automatically, where we've got a well programmed, fine tuned predictive model, AI completely changes the game.

Patricia L. Harman (30:57):
Yep, it really does. Ken, what excites you about the use in the adoption of technology Now? I know you guys are doing some really cool things.

Kenneth Tolson (31:05):
Yeah, I just want to follow through on one point there. I think it was this morning, the comment in the keynote this morning was in the past three years, we've created more data than we have in the history of mankind. We absolutely have to have these type of tools to be able to leverage the proliferation of data that we are creating today. And that's what really excites me is that we're really going to be able to harness the power of that data, the relational, the cues that we don't see within the data as humans because of the limitations of our capacity to consume it. So I'm really, really excited about that, and I touched on it a little bit earlier, the extension of the ecosystem as well, to be able to move to either radically mitigate loss or radically reduce or reduce severity or even frequency of loss.

(31:51):
I think we have tools now that once we get them elegantly incorporated into the ecosystem, we'll be able to really avoid a lot of claims as a result of this. It's not simply a matter of making that claim faster or more accurate, but it's actually avoiding that claim in the future. So I'm really excited about the possibilities of this that we haven't even imagined yet. And every day it's one of the coolest things that I get to work on with the large language models we've created around policy interpretation, the stuff we're doing with triage right now, we get to experiment in this space, and I get a lot from conferences like this where we get to share these ideas and it helps us inform our product development and our product vision around this path that we're on. So it is really an exciting time to be alive, to be,

Patricia L. Harman (32:41):
Yeah, it really is. I don't know, Janet, was there anything else you wanted to add?

Janet King (32:45):
No, I mean, I just think with all of the difficulties people have getting insurance in some high risk areas and stuff, I think it's exciting to think about how these kinds of technologies might make it more affordable for carriers to continue to serve some of those populations who need it the most, right? If you're in an area that experiences extreme weather conditions or is at high risk of flooding and things like that. So hopefully that technology will help bring everybody along.

Kenneth Tolson (33:14):
Actually, I'll share an example, California, everybody's heard the California Florida capacity issues that are out there, but we've come across a company that's really changing the way they underwrite in the wildfire prone areas to use artificial intelligence to scenario the underwriting model of how they can alter the vegetation and the structure itself to reduce the risk significantly, and obviously underwrite more accurately the policy piece. But this type of capacity reduction drives innovation too. So while it's a short-term bad story, they're already being approached by others to leverage their underwriting model and see if it will perform as they claim it can be. So the truth, the proof will be in the pudding, so to speak, but it's really an exciting time because this drives innovation as well. I can't get Florida unless hurricane improve. Oh, and

Patricia L. Harman (34:08):
I was going to say there are some buildings and there are some things that they can do to make them a little bit more hurricane prone. So it's been interesting to see hurricane proof, proof. That's what I meant. Sorry, it's late on a Friday afternoon

Chris Bennett (34:22):
Following up on winter thing you said too. And I think if you think about it like this, reducing severity helps the insurance industry that helps the insurer. Reducing frequency helps the claimants, that helps the people, that helps our customers. And so as technology, as we use technology to start driving down not only the cost of claims but the occurrence of claims, that's massive.

Patricia L. Harman (34:48):
I had a conversation with someone at another conference and they were talking about, they were looking at how if there was a way that they could impact the frequency and the severity of storms, it was very interesting to hear their take on that. And I thought, you know what? That's something I'm going to be watching just to see what happens going forward. So AI is changing the customer experience on multiple levels. How is it improving the customer experience from your perspective? Ken, I'll start with you on that first.

Kenneth Tolson (35:20):
We recently had a group of chief claims officers together to have a whole discussion around how they were using it in their space. And one of the key opportunities you have with embedding AI is hyper-personalization, the ability to really understand your customer, to be able to connect to your customer and tailor your financial solution, whether it's an insurance product or financial product or whatever the product is to that person's unique characteristics. And that's what we're really excited about, whether you embedded in your call center operations and to assist with agents and to move back and forth from the, because the voice has gotten quite good. It is really super responsive now and what you can do with the voice. But the journey we're on is to try to blend that with our existing call center agents so that we can move seamlessly between whether it's an AI driven, surge based model that we can scale up very quickly, but also get those calls into the hands of people when they need to get into the hands of people. And that's the trick, so to speak. But the use cases around it in the claims and finance space are just incredible about what you can do. And like I said, we're focused on just three areas, triage call center, and our cover AI tool, which we're doing for policy interpretation and contract evaluation, and that we're solely focused in that area to keep a very narrow focus so we can have the biggest impact, but we are just scratching the surface there. Wow.

Patricia L. Harman (36:43):
So Chris, what are you seeing? How is it improving the customer experience from your perspective?

Chris Bennett (36:49):
So we're seeing, obviously customers across the board are trying to find ways to use AI, but where we're seeing subtraction with the customers that we're working with, one of them on the front end, and it's helping to prevent claims from occurring. It's more on the loss control side is with the site surveys and audits and the ability to expand the reach of an auditing organization, leveraging AI and somebody who's closer. So we've got a lot of clients beyond just the insurer, the insurers, we've got the insureds as our client, so Target and Amazon and Google and UPS. These are also our clients and we working with some really innovative companies that are looking at how they can drive down their frequency and severity using ai. And one of the ways is by going out and doing these audits where they're leveraging ai, snap a few photos, write some basic descriptions to really go through and say, Hey, there's something in this picture that we want to pay attention to.

(37:50):
We're seeing something that when we look at the claims data, we found that there's a correlation and we want to pay attention to this thing and to raise things that an inspector might not even think about in addition to automating the things that they ought to be thinking about. So that's a really exciting use case for us that we're rolling out. Some of the others are just in the FNOL process, similarly, asking somebody to sit and fill out a form about what happened and choose codes for the things so that we know and can codify that and make sure that we handle it and route it correctly. It's much simpler if somebody at the front of a store where there's an incident can snap a couple of photos and submit 'em with a quick voiceover description of what occurred, and then let AI start to sort through and say, okay, here's how I'm going to codify this.

(38:37):
Here's the attached photos, here's some additional risks we need to look at. We may want to have somebody go out to the store and do an inspection. So these are the types of things we're seeing that are actually starting to drive beyond the sort of generative use cases of help me draft a professional email in a shorter period of time, or help me summarize a claim so that when I open that claim and look at it, I'm not sorting through a bunch of different information. I know immediately what happened because AI is going to raise that the way you go on Amazon. And today, most of you I'm sure, look at reviews on Amazon and it'll surface using AI, and it'll tell you, Hey, here's what customers are saying about this product. Here's the themes. That's a great use case of ai. And incorporating those types of things into our world is going to have a big impact for our customers.

Patricia L. Harman (39:20):
Yeah, that's true. I'm thinking about they're predicting an overactive hurricane season this year, and I'm wondering what kind of an impact AI and some of these other technologies we'll even have going forward. Maybe this will be, well, I guess it was around for last year's, but this could be an interesting opportunity to see some of these use cases actually in practice.

Kenneth Tolson (39:43):
Well, I think the surge that you see in the hurricane, especially when you have such available set of claims to respond to that surge environment drives innovation around that. But there are tools now on the market that are examining the images and actually trying to begin to write estimates and determine the quantum of a claim. And we've worked with a number of these entities already, but it's not quite there, but it will be there very soon where that package will come from some surveying method from the field and will go through an AI engine to attempt to determine the quantum, and then it will go back to a human to be QA and to validate and to make any judgment or regulatory license requirement things that are done. But we're trying to get those tools in a position to make our adjusting workforce more effective, more accurate. And then on the backside, from an auditing standpoint, the AI tools are already in existence today to be able to scrub through and look at to catch issues and to clean up and drive accuracy. So the writing piece is going to be a big deal for the exact wearers and CoreLogics of the world to be able to embed those solutions in place. It's really going to take more time out of the lifecycle of the claim, which puts the digital payment piece back into the cross airs too. Yeah.

Patricia L. Harman (41:02):
But all of these advances put together could really have a significant impact on the industry in a very positive way. So we've covered a lot over the last half hour or so. I wanted to give each of you a minute a chance to share a closing thought. So Chris, I'll start with you first. Sorry to put you on the spot

Chris Bennett (41:24):
There. No, no, that's okay. For me, we all know there's a technology adoption curve that everybody's probably seen at one point or another, and there's the concept of real innovators and then early adopters, and then you have kind of the main curve that goes through when typically most companies would adopt that technology. We all know that insurance is somewhere on the back half of that curve. It always has been. We are late to adopt new technologies. I think what we're finding now with the pressures on the insurance industry in general, and some of them are external factors. So we know that price impacts insurance deeply, right? So inflation, the cost of goods, supply chain disruptions, all of these things have an impact on insurance. Consumer expectations has an impact on insurance. I think what we're going to see, and what I want everybody to be open to is starting to move a little forward on the technology adoption curve, let technology help us solve some of these problems and not be resistant to it. Because historically as an industry, we've, again, we mitigate risk for a living. We've been a little reluctant to adopt technologies on the front end of that curve, but the impact for our organizations, for our customers can be massive. That

Patricia L. Harman (42:45):
Very true. Ken, your closing thoughts?

Kenneth Tolson (42:48):
No, that's a really good point. I find that the industry as a whole is very conservative. We work with some of the largest carriers and some of the smallest carriers in the US and the large carriers move very slow because of the protection of brand. I mean, there's a lot of risk that if you don't do it the right way or you can do more harm than good. And so there's a way to experiment safely and to pilot, well, we don't like to use the word pilot, but to experiment safely, bring technologies in, test with consumers, and to be curious in this marketplace. And I've always been very fortunate. I've worked in places that have indulged my curiosity, so I'm always willing to drive change like this, but I think it's incumbent upon us as leaders in this space to share good ideas, to be vocal about this, and to be open about both our successes and our failures so that we can learn from each other.

(43:42):
And conferences like this are really important to me to be able to voice some of that. I mean, we've bet on some technologies. I actually have two such stories. I won't share 'em from up here, but if anybody wants to catch me later, I'll be glad to share you some of the hard lessons I've learned with the technology stuff. But you bet on technologies, they don't all win. So you're going to have those stories and you're going to get burned a few times, but you got to take some risk. And I would just be cautiously take risk to make this a better marketplace for the ultimately, you keep the consumer in mind and the consumer at the forefront. Let that be your guide, right?

Patricia L. Harman (44:17):
Yep. That Janet, you're closing thoughts with, well, because you get to look at everything across the entire industry and across other industries as well. So I'm thinking that your perspective in terms of the use of technology will be broader in some cases.

Janet King (44:32):
Yeah, I mean, we cover these topics across all of financial and professional services. And I would say that with respect to ai, I am pretty excited to see what the insurance sector does with ai. I think it's uniquely positioned with access to data and use cases to really leverage AI in some new and innovative ways. And in fact, we did a big survey on AI across banking and insurance earlier in the year and really leaned into Gen ai. And one of the things that we asked about was what they were thinking about from a staffing perspective and how willing they were to pay a premium for AI fluent employees. And the insurers who took that survey were far and away the most willing to pay that premium for talent to help them advance the ball. The big banks were right there too, but everybody else was trailing by quite a bit. So I thought that was really interesting just to see that insurance was really thinking about not just the tech, but putting the people in place to drive those technology initiatives forward.

Patricia L. Harman (45:34):
Great. So this concludes our last session of the day. Thank you Chris and Ken and Janet for sharing. Thank you. Where insurers are investing in the claims technology, we've had an excellent couple of days, and to kind of put a bow on things, I'd like to invite Steve Kreon from JD Power. He was yesterday's keynote speaker. I'd like him to come back on stage to recognize the brands that are standing out when it comes to digital performance. So

Janet King (46:01):
Thank you.