Life insurance coverage stands on the cusp of a brand new chapter in reinvention. Till now, insurers have been steadily transferring ahead with wide-scale digital transformation. However with the impacts of AI, together with generative AI, change is coming quick. We’re in a vibrant new yr, and life insurers are beginning to speed up and implement their reinvention methods. That is the time to be daring.

These underwriting predictions supply insights into how carriers can take motion to really change into digital this yr.

Generative AI brings next-level buyer centricity

Generative AI-empowered buyer centricity will shut the hole even additional between carriers and clients for extra customized product choices and providers. This pattern will proceed to succeed in new ranges within the yr forward as new applied sciences allow deeper connections between clients, advisors and carriers. Latest Accenture analysis discovered that as we speak’s clients really feel the necessity for defense in areas past what conventional insurance coverage provides. For instance, the following era of insurance coverage clients say they really feel much less protected for psychological well being. To deal with these considerations and extra, steerage from an advisor is vital. Nevertheless, insurers have been unable to offer that stage of buyer expertise—till now.

Generative AI extends the care and data of hyper-personalized options to extra folks. Digital brokers, numerous chat functionalities, ask-me-anything capabilities and the evolution of enterprise-level generative AI options are swiftly bridging present gaps throughout the customer-advisor-carrier framework within the {industry}—and that is simply to start with levels.

In final yr’s predictions, I highlighted how new ranges of AI and automation capabilities would improve real-time underwriting choices and allow a quicker digital shopping for expertise. We imagine this pattern may even proceed this yr as increasingly more life insurers start their implementation methods.

It’s value monitoring the event of generative AI underwriting instruments in 2023 that work to boost the effectivity and accuracy of underwriting and threat administration in addition to streamline processes and generate beneficial insights. Sometimes called Underwriter Co-pilot at Accenture, this know-how will play a fair stronger position in 2024 because it continues to be fine-tuned with advances in LLMs.

I need to be clear that new applied sciences is not going to substitute advisors. These applied sciences are crucial as insurers proceed to face expert labor shortages throughout the insurance coverage worth chain. The options which can be extra private and customised work to deal with a special sort of expertise scarcity. With the retirement disaster in insurance coverage nonetheless on the horizon, Human + Machine collaboration will change into much more essential as we search for new methods to assist staff throughout the core enterprise features of each underwriting and claims.

To share a concrete and up to date {industry} implementation, Accenture helped a big A&H insurer to automate its claims course of by utilizing superior voice AI, AI-powered human help capabilities, a digital digital assistant and proactive, multi-day journeys. The journeys concerned two-way messaging tied to an occasion that helped full a buyer’s request in the identical channel for a smoother expertise whereas the AI-powered assistant labored to offer real-time AI-based steerage to brokers throughout buyer conversations.

Digitalization will decide up pace to start out the reinvention journey

Life insurers might tout digital underwriting processes and aspirations, however many are nonetheless caught in analog operations. Carriers have been paper-based firms with paper-based processes, and this continues to be the inspiration of enterprise as as we speak’s paper takes the type of PDFs, Excels and Adobe. However in 2024, true digitalization and the transition to real-time knowledge shall be extra achievable than ever if carriers have the creativeness and management to start out the reinvention journey.

The reinvention shall be to really make life insurance coverage digital end-to-end—transitioning every thing in your corporation to real-time knowledge. From bettering your claims core and engagement system to enhancing the underwriter’s workflow, as soon as info is knowledge, there are such a lot of methods to rewrite processes. And the advantages are there, together with expense financial savings, uptake and plenty of extra. Whereas I don’t imagine this would be the yr for finishing full reinvention, it’s the yr to start out your journey by specializing in items of your corporation to reinvent.

I’d advocate taking inspiration from considered one of as we speak’s industry-transforming leaders. Ping An launched a pilot digital answer to boost agent planning, improve gross sales efficiency and enhance its life insurance coverage enterprise. This pilot resulted in a lower of growth time by 30% and a service re-use charge of 25%.

The time is now to maneuver from experimentation to implementation

To begin any journey requires motion. A number of life insurers will take necessary steps of their digital journeys this yr by going past proof of idea to implement the transformative instruments and mature applied sciences presently accessible.

Coming into the implementation part will drive enterprise transformation, impacting every thing from the underwriting expertise and the claims expertise to the shopper expertise and past. As a rising know-how space in insurance coverage, clever ingestion (the flexibility to digitally ingest knowledge) provides unimaginable benefits as a place to begin for this part.

As a closing thought for this weblog put up, one other noteworthy growth to keep watch over is the emergence of complete beneficiary care providers as a distinguishing worth proposition for the promoting of latest merchandise—a subject I’ll discover extra in my subsequent weblog. Keep tuned.

Let’s discuss about implementing initiatives in your reinvention journey.

Moreover, try Accenture’s new community of generative AI studios.

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