Practical First Steps for Integrating AI Without Disrupting Operations

“AI is definitely frontier-level stuff that’s changing rapidly, so it’s natural to be cautious about its adoption,” Villa explained. A practical first step is to focus on data hygiene, ensuring that AI has access to accurate and structured data. He recommends insurers take key steps, including:

• Establishing clear data standards for formatting, naming conventions, and storage.
• Enhancing data security and privacy by anonymizing or adapting personal data for AI model training.
• Extracting, integrating, and consolidating data from various systems.

“Having limited data sets that are thoroughly cleaned and vetted will create a strong data foundation and position AI initiatives for success,” Villa added.

Using AI to Enhance Teams, Improve Decision-Making, and Drive Efficiency

Most insurers start their AI journey with chatbots or automated document processing to improve data access and decision-making. AI streamlines manual tasks, such as summarizing home inspection reports, which typically take underwriters about 30 minutes to review. AI can ingest data, redact personally identifiable information (PII), and generate a summary in seconds, making it immediately actionable. “This level of AI precision reduces cycle time, but does not replace the underwriter,” said Villa. “Instead, it’s a collaborative process that combines human expertise with machine learning a ‘human-in-the-loop’ approach.”

Overcoming Key Challenges in the AI Journey to Deliver Measurable Value

“I think the biggest challenge we face is thinking differently about the work we’ve been doing for the past 20 years,” said Villa. “Using ChatGPT to help enhance the quality of and reduce the time it takes to put things in writing or researching topics feels natural. Who wouldn’t want to spend less time writing emails or researching topics?” However, the challenge arises when AI begins to automate tasks professionals feel they have mastered. “What if I’m a senior underwriter and I am an expert at inspection report reviews?” Villa posed. “I may not be as open to using AI, even if it gives me back time in my day. Helping our team understand that AI isn’t going to replace the work we do, but rather augment it, will be key to successful adoption.”

How OneShield Helps AAIS Members Navigate the Evolving AI Landscape

OneShield is at the forefront of AI-driven transformation, offering two modern core systems: OMS and Enterprise. “Both solutions can be delivered as enterprise suites to automate policy, billing, claims, workflow, and reporting, or they can be implemented as a modular solution to address any one particular aspect of the insurance value chain,” Villa explained. For AAIS Members, OneShield’s expertise in AAIS lines of business makes adoption even smoother. “Across our two products, we can support all AAIS lines. We have particularly strong experience with unique AAIS lines such as COP and Artisans,” Villa noted. “Leveraging this experience to deliver pre-built AAIS content within our core solutions can accelerate core transformation projects at a significantly reduced cost to the insurer.”

Learn more at OneShield.com.

To view the full interview with Tony Villa, click on the video above.

The post AI in Insurance: Streamlining Underwriting Without Disruption first appeared on AAIS.

How Insurers Can Leverage New, Unconventional Technologies and Insights to Improve Loss Ratio

Ham believes that new behavioral insights offer insurers a critical tool to enhance risk assessment and loss ratios. “Insurers can leverage new and unconventional behavioral insights by performing better, more thorough risk assessment,” he explained. These insights provide an additional layer of understanding that complements traditional factors used in risk evaluation. With the inclusion of behavioral insights, carriers get “a factor that to date they haven’t had access to,” offering a fuller picture of the risk profile. This allows them to make more informed and profitable decisions.

How Carriers Can Integrate Behavioral Intelligence Into Existing Risk Mitigation Strategy

Carriers can integrate behavioral intelligence into their risk mitigation strategies at multiple points in the insurance value chain, according to Ham. By using behavioral insights, they can target individuals whose profiles align with their risk appetite, tailoring risk selection from the outset. “It goes down the insurance value chain, where they can dictate the buying journeys based on these new insights,” Ham explained. Additionally, carriers can use behavioral intelligence to develop renewal strategies, allowing for a more dynamic approach to risk management.

Using Behavioral Insights to Help Carriers Achieve Goals of Equity and Fairness

Behavioral insights can play a pivotal role in helping carriers meet goals of equity and fairness. “By getting that complete picture, we have to recognize the uniqueness of individuals, and behavioral insights are exactly that they’re telling the carrier unique insights about that individual, so they don’t have to bucket them or ban them, ” said Ham. He explained that by understanding individuals on a more personal level, carriers can avoid the unintended exclusion of certain groups, ensuring a more inclusive approach to underwriting and risk management. “It’s not based on banking, so you’re getting insights that are more inclusive of individuals, as opposed to those that may unintentionally exclude some.”

About Pinpoint Predictive, Inc.

Ham described Pinpoint Predictive as “the ultimate risk selection platform.” He elaborated, “Pinpoint Predictive leverages machine learning and these new unconventional behavioral insights to deliver unparalleled precision in underwriting and actuarial decisions. The company’s platform addresses not only profitability for insurers but also improves the overall customer experience and provides agents with better tools to represent carriers effectively. “For me, Pinpoint is that ultimate risk selection platform that allows everybody to win.”

Learn more at pinpoint.ai.

To view the full interview with Scott Ham, click on the video above.

The post Enhancing Risk Mitigation with Behavioral Intelligence first appeared on AAIS.

In 2024, a P&C insurer study conducted by Capgemini suggested that 41% of the underwriters’ time is spent on “administrative and operational activities, constraining their capacity and triggering value chain challenges in pricing and broker/customer experience.”

Improving underwriter efficiency has always been a key driving force behind selecting an insurance platform. However, merely adopting a modern insurance platform is insufficient to address some of the current inefficiencies. To truly enhance underwriting efficiency, insurers now have the opportunity to select an insurance platform with built-in advanced AI-based automation and process optimization solutions. Furthermore, selecting a platform equipped with AI capabilities and partnering with a solution provider that is actively investing in AI technologies will not only meet current underwriting demands but also drive future productivity and innovation requirements.

With built-in AI-driven solutions, insurers can streamline operations, reduce manual workloads, and enhance overall efficiency, positioning themselves for long-term success in a rapidly evolving market. A modern platform working in cohesion with its own AI solution is the only way to achieve maximum efficiency and success.

Key areas where AI can bring substantial benefits include:

• Improving User Experience and Automation: AI-powered platforms can streamline and automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry and analysis, thereby reducing the administrative burden on underwriters. For example, Cogitate’s DigitalEdge platform has UW Assist, powered by CogitateLabs, which includes data ingestion capabilities. The AI reviews the input submission forms, automatically identifies the inputs for the submission through its powerful LLM models, and inserts data automatically into the application. This drastically reduces the manual administrative work for the underwriters and improves their user experience.
• Reducing Premium Leakage and Adverse Selection: AI can play a crucial role in minimizing premium leakage by identifying discrepancies and ensuring that premiums accurately reflect the risk associated with each policy. Moreover, AI-driven analytics can detect patterns indicative of adverse selection, where higher-risk individuals might be disproportionately represented. By addressing these issues, insurers can better align premiums with actual risk profiles and improve the financial stability of their portfolios.
• Prioritizing Work: AI can assist underwriters in prioritizing their workload by analyzing and sorting tasks based on urgency and impact. Intelligent systems can assess cases that require immediate attention and those that can be deferred, optimizing the allocation of resources and improving workflow efficiency. This prioritization ensures that critical tasks are addressed promptly, leading to better risk management and decision-making.
• Identifying Demands: Attorney demand letters are one of the biggest challenges facing the insurance industry. Any bad faith claim can have a significant impact, with settlements running into millions of dollars. Insurance companies have to deploy the manual process of reviewing thousands of documents daily to identify demand letters from attorneys. This is a time-consuming and error-prone process. With solutions like Cogitate’s DemandAssist, an AI/ML-based product, significant operational efficiency with an error-free process can be achieved.

Conclusion

AI-based tools are becoming a part of the work process, and proper adoption is key for an organization’s success and sustainability. To effectively leverage innovative tools, particularly AI-assisted solutions, it is essential to first build trust within your team. This involves gradually introducing these tools to address specific issues, consistently using and testing them, and measuring the improvements they bring. By demonstrating tangible benefits and success, you foster confidence in the technology and cultivate advocates for innovation within your organization.

Equally important is finding the right partner, like Cogitate, to support your transformation journey. Selecting the right solution provider who not only offers advanced tools as part of their insurance platform but also invests in ongoing innovation and support ensures that you have a reliable ally in navigating the complexities of modern insurance technology needs. This partnership is crucial for maximizing the potential of AI solutions and achieving long-term success in underwriting and beyond. Learn more about Cogitate at cogitate.com.

The post AI-Powered Insurance Platforms Boost Underwriting Efficiency first appeared on AAIS.

What is GenAI?

GenAI is a relatively new form of artificial intelligence and it represents the natural evolution in the path of AI, according to Pasricha. “What makes it special is its ability to actually understand language, be able to synthesize it, analyze it, compare it, and create sensible responses for you,” he said. “So, we see it as a big step forward, especially with the large language models because they now have the ability to ingest and analyze a lot of data in context.”

How GenAI Can Be Applied to the Insurance Industry

Pasricha feels that GenAI has a lot of applications across the whole insurance value chain. “We all know that the insurance industry still has a lot of manual processes,” he explained. “With GenAI, you can actually start to make sense of complex documents. You can read them like a human would, take meaning [and] values out, and start taking comparative steps.” For example, GenAI can assist with reading a claims note. It will look at what the claim is for and what the values are, then compare it to what’s covered in the policy. From policy checking and comparing different quotes from carriers in reinsurance, to the ingestion of large treaty and portal documents, Pasricha believes the applications of GenAI in the insurance industry are endless.

Biggest Roadblocks to Utilizing GenAI

Pasricha sees five main roadblocks in the enterprise and insurance adoption of GenAI.

1. Security and Customization: Security and customization are important in GenAI applications. “When you’re using [GenAI] for sensitive and complex insurance tasks and doing it in the enterprise, it requires some sort of a secure environment,” Pasricha shared. “This involves a lot of integration and building custom models that understand insurance.”
2. Precision: There is no room for error in the insurance industry. “In this industry, a single error can cost a lot,” Pasricha warned. “If you’re a broker and you didn’t get the right coverage, or you failed to warn [the insured], that can be a major exposure. So, the risk of experimentation is very high.” Therefore, having a very finely tuned GenAI model and a good validation and QA (quality assurance) process is imperative.
3. Data Privacy and Confidentiality: Pasricha emphasized the significance of data security when implementing GenAI. “You can’t just use a general open GenAI service because that will leak your confidential information, like your forms or your special underwriting rules, and become a part of the public office,” he stated.
4. Skill Set: According to Pasricha, expertise and modern approaches are essential for GenAI development. “You need to know what you’re doing,” he stressed. “You cannot apply old knowledge, old methods, or old software techniques to building the GenAI; you’ll just waste a lot of time and money.”
5. Time and Cost: Pasricha highlighted the financial pressures and urgency faced by organizations. “Nobody has endless budgets, yet executive teams and boards are asking for results today,” said Pasricha. “There is a way to get accelerated results from GenAI, but you need to be able to solve all these other problems to get it to work.”

How Carriers Can Best Navigate GenAI Roadblocks

Pasricha believes insurers need to have the right software foundation to be successful with GenAI. “You need to put in place a lot of building blocks so that you can build safely, securely, and with high accuracy and effectiveness,” he shared. With software like BluePond.AI, carriers have a partner that has already built some of those foundational building blocks. “Even if you want to build your own application or train your model with your own data, you still have a partner [in BluePond.AI] who knows what they’re doing, has the right skill set and expertise, and more importantly, has an enterprise-grade software platform where you can test out all of your data privacy, security, [and] quality concerns to make sure that they’re taken care of.”

About BluePond.AI

BluePond.AI is a relatively new firm with a team of more than 50 members, each bringing 15 to 20 years of experience in the insurance industry and a long track record of developing machine learning tools for the sector. “Our special sauce is that we have a platform that is very targeted and pre-trained for property and casualty (P&C) insurance,” Pasricha explained. “Think of it as a GenAI platform that, out of the box, understands complex P&C language, can identify P&C insurance documents, and can run very fine-grained operations and data extraction on those documents.” For example, for brokers, BluePond.AI can identify a policy, the line and class, and who the insured is. “In the context of the line of business, we can automatically do a policy check or a code comparison for underwriting at a carrier site,” said Pasricha. “We can look at compliance to underwriting rules for claims and match claims documents and policy documents for reinsurance, too.” BluePond.AI is a custom-built platform for the whole P&C value. Learn more at bluepond.ai.

To view the full interview with Pranav Pasricha, click on the video above.

The post Applications of GenAI in Insurance first appeared on AAIS.

How to Create Loyalty in Your Organization

Creating a positive company culture and having empathy for employees are two of the most effective ways to create loyalty within an organization, according to Emek. She also believes a company’s onboarding process is important. “A lot of companies don’t have a clear onboarding process,” Emek stated. “I suggest that when anyone joins the company, they get introduced to all the different departments, so they understand the whole company.”

Another crucial factor for creating loyalty at one’s company is to make sure employees feel like they have a purpose there. “The insurance industry, in my opinion, has a purpose for everything because we’re protecting risks,” Emek shared. “Even the smallest thing you do is what’s protecting somebody’s life, somebody’s home, somebody’s business. So, communicating the purpose is so crucial to every job if you want to keep people.”

Effects of COVID & Remote Work Expectations

While COVID definitely changed the expectations of workers when it comes to remote work, Emek thinks it is changing back. “Now [companies] are understanding that people were highly productive [working from home] during COVID because they were home all day and night,” Emek explained. “Once COVID passed and people now could go out, productivity dropped. Companies recognize that young people are not getting mentored enough by working from home 100% of the time.” According to Emek, companies are now offering more flexible work arrangements where employees are in the office three to four days a week.

Another effect of COVID is that salaries have increased within the insurance industry and beyond. “This is a good thing,” in Emek’s opinion. “The insurance industry is competing with young people going into industries that pay much better salaries than we do, so raising that salary bar is definitely going to help attract young people in this industry.” Overall, she believes the outcome of COVID has been positive on work expectations.

Managing Today’s Workforce

Emek believes insurance companies need to think differently about how to manage their workers. “I think we have some very old management constructs that we still work by,” she admitted. “One of them is the performance review, which I call a report card. Report cards are for elementary, junior high school, and high school. They are at the end of the year for the most for most companies and by the end of the year, nobody remembers everything they’ve done.” Emek recommends implementing a newer version of this in the form of monthly one-on-one meetings, where employees and managers discuss goals for that month.

Another element that needs to be changed is how companies manage personal time off (PTO). “I think when you have the right people, it’s about the outcomes [and] results,” said Emek. “People sometimes don’t recognize that it’s about the quality of the work that’s being done, not how much time you might have put in.” All in all, as long as employees get their job done, they should be able to take any PTO they need.

WAHVE: Helping Insurers Cope

WAHVE offers two talent solutions to insurers. “Our main solution, which we built the company on, is helping our retiring insurance industry professionals continue to work in their retirement,” Emek explained. “Because the truth is, people aren’t really retiring from work, they’re just retired from the office. They’re no longer on a career path; they want to have flexibility.” WAHVE has been capturing the retiring insurance industry population, qualifying them, and contracting them back out to insurance companies, retail brokers, and wholesale brokers all across the country. WAHVE has placed over 4,000 assignments over the last 13 years, from CSRs to underwriters to actuaries and even attorneys. By keeping the aging population working, WAHVE is helping the insurance industry maintain its institutional knowledge and fill that talent gap.

Another solution WAHVE released this last year is called Talent Acquisition Outsourcing. “We created bias-free, qualifying software exclusive within the insurance industry,” Emek explained. The software’s algorithm will match applicants with job ads that have similar hard and soft skill requirements by giving the applicant a score. “Then we give the client the five best-scored diverse candidate pools to hire from. So, you don’t have to look at 100 resumes and worry about your bias, because you’ll get the five most qualified scored against you.”

WAHVE also supports not-for-profits in the insurance industry that recruit talent, like the CPCU society. “We support them because we know it’s so important to bring in the young talent,” said Emek. “That’s why I built WAHVE in the first place…to help solve that problem.”

To view the full interview with Sharon Emek, please click the video above.

To view part one of this series where Emek discusses how to apply AI to solve the talent crunch and avoid its pitfalls, click here.

The post WAHVE CEO Explains How to Solve the Talent Gap and Retain Quality Talent in a Competitive Market first appeared on AAIS.

State of the Talent Gap in the Insurance Industry & Efforts to Fill It

Emek admitted the state of the talent gap in the insurance industry is complex. “It started probably in the late 1990s when carriers began to close down their insurance schools,” she said. “Also, the money was with the technology space and Wall Street, which were exploding at the time, so we didn’t attract a lot of young people.” As a result, the population in the insurance industry began to age.

According to Emek, industry professionals are beginning to realize that finding talent from four-year colleges is no longer ideal. “We have to start looking at non-traditional ways of [filling the talent gap]; maybe start looking at two-year colleges or even high school graduates,” she advised. “We should be creating more kinds of mentorship programs and internships so that people can learn and understand how powerful our industry is.” Even though the industry is beginning to look at these different methodologies for attracting young talent, the issue then becomes how to keep them. “Young people move [jobs] very quickly and the industry is used to having people with longevity.,” said Emek. “We have to rethink that because longevity might not be there going forward.”

Trends Affecting the Search for Talent

As Emek mentioned, one of the main issues affecting the industry is that young talent tends to job-hop. “This is really affecting the industry because we’re not understanding what that means,” she said. “We need to come up with a methodology to keep that job hopping within the industry, so we at least keep the talent.” Another trend is that the industry is moving to look at the underserved population for talent, like within the military. “We need to look at how to create the skills and the talent that we need,” Emek urged. “There are some companies that are setting up their own insurance schools to teach kids because the future is going to not necessarily be about a college degree, but more about the skills.”

Searching for Candidates with AI

AI’s role in finding the right candidates is a bit complicated and problematic for Emek. But AI does help when it comes to job boards like Indeed. “It looks at words in a resume and words in your job ad and it does a screening based on them,” she explained. But, according to Emek, the problem is that AI does not fully qualify the applicant, so hiring managers may end up getting applicants who are overqualified for the position. “It’s still too new [of a technology],” she claimed. “But it will evolve and there will be more sophisticated methodologies used to make sure that you’re getting better-qualified resumes.” Another issue is that AI tools exclude a lot of candidates if you leave out certain details in the job ad. “If you don’t put a salary range, you’re going to exclude people because more experienced candidates might look at the job and assume that since there’s no salary listed, it’s going to be a low salary,” Emek warned.

Advice for Hiring Managers

“Advice I would give hiring managers is to make sure job descriptions are accurate, which means that they have to communicate more with HR,” Emek suggested. “Sometimes, HR writes job ads and they don’t fully understand the hiring managers’ needs, so there is a disconnect. They really need to work together to make sure the right message is getting out there.” Emek also reminds hiring managers to not exclude candidates just because they do not possess a certain hard skill. “When you’re looking at those resumes, you have to look at what their soft skills are, because people don’t always tell the truth [about hard skills],” Emek shared. “You have to make sure you consider the soft skills of that person because many times they’re more important.” She believes too many candidates tend to get excluded because of that.

To view the full interview with Sharon Emek, please click the video above.

In part two of this series, Emek discusses how to retain quality talent in a competitive environment. Click here to watch the interview.

The post Applying AI to Solve the Talent Crunch and How to Avoid Its Pitfalls with WAHVE CEO first appeared on AAIS.

Overview of Orion180 & Chrp Technologies

Orion180 is a technology-based insurance company that utilizes cutting-edge technology paired with outstanding customer service to simplify the insurance experience and enhance the customer experience. They are primarily HO3 in six southeast states but are beginning to roll out other products in more states. Chrp Technologies helps home insurance companies build great relationships with their insureds through proprietary AI products that deliver loss prevention and an enhanced customer experience. Chrp has seen tremendous success with clients like Orion180.

Finding Solutions by Utilizing AI Tools

Orion180 as a company focuses on three areas: efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience. “Our challenge was timely identification of risk and issues,” Wyrick shared. “Specifically, having inspections completed, allowing us time to review them, and giving the insured time to repair anything that we found had adverse conditions. So, we really needed to streamline that process to make it more efficient.” Accuracy is also extremely important to Orion180 because they base their outcome on the data that’s provided back to them from inspections. And, overall, the inspection process is a customer experience. What attracted Orion180 to Chrp Technologies was the ease of use and that it hit all three of the company’s focal points. “From an efficiency standpoint, it’s an automatic process,” said Wyrick. “You don’t have to manually order inspections, follow up, track, and keep all that data together. [The] AI built into the platform is accurate. We’ve gone from months of training time down to weeks. And if we have an issue, I know Chin and his team will be there on the customer experience side.”

Impact on Retention Rate & Policy Holder Engagement

Since partnering with Chrp, Orion180 has been able to retain its policies. “When we launched Chrp, our average date of a completed inspection returned was around 16 days,” Wyrick reported. “With all of the updates, we went from 16 days to now nine days completed and it’s still dropping. We’ve got drastically increased policy retention because we’re able to review those risks and provide those solutions and keep that policy.” Wyrick believes this process with Chrp has made policyholders more aware of their risk and its impact on insurance.

Overcoming Challenges

Being a company born out of Florida, Ma admits one of the biggest challenges for Chrp is that a lot of its customers are of an older demographic and do not feel they are tech-savvy enough to use the service. “So, one thing that we’ve put into place right away is a seven-day-a-week, 365 customer service model,” said Ma. “In our company, you go through a rite of passage called the legendary conversation.” This is essentially walking a customer through the inspection process and guiding them through the app. These conversations with customers influence the way that Chrp designed its application. “Those are the types of conversations and experiences that give us the opportunity to make improvements.”

Insight on How Chrp Works

Chrp complies with two mission statements: Eliminate Non-Cat Claims and Help People Have Healthy Homes. “Conducting inspections is [not] a new thing for the insurance industry,” Ma confessed. “But doing so the right way is incredibly important. Right now, the ‘right way’ also necessitates an economic model that works with an underwriting.” Being able to leverage self-inspections in concert with physical inspections, in a cost-effective way, is a huge plus in driving volume, according to Ma. Then, the correct symptoms that lead to claims need to be analyzed. “If you get those two things right, you should see a high inspection conversion, roughly between 75% to 85%, on the self-inspection side. Blended cost-wise, that can actually reduce your overall inspection cost,” he stated. Chrp delivers highly accurate AI to streamline what symptoms require underwriting action and also offer a solution to customers so they can prioritize their time. This leads to the end result, which is how to eliminate non-cat claims to ultimately improve profitability.

When the inspection report comes through to the customer, any adverse conditions that the AI has found are listed first. “We’re looking at those first before we even get through the rest of the inspection,” Wyrick shared. “That’s the efficiency aspect of [Chrp]; we can see right off the bat what’s wrong. If it’s bad enough, we’ll already know how this risk is going to end up.” But the best function of the Chrp platform in Wyrick’s opinion is the ability to escalate inspections. “If we have a reviewer that’s kind of guessing at something or if they have a question, they can escalate that inspection to a new cue, and myself or another senior member can go in to look and write our notes. Then it goes right back to that inspector.”

To view the webinar in its entirety, click on the video above.

Questions? Please don’t hesitate to reach out to any of the featured speakers through the contact information below.

Werner Kruck
President & CEO – AAIS
wernerk@aaisonline.com

Chin Ma
President – Chrp Technologies
cma@chrptech.com

Brandi Wyrick
AVP of Experience – Orion180

bwyrick@orion180.com

The post Webinar: Leveraging Today’s Underwriting Technologies to Modernize Homeowners Insurance first appeared on AAIS.