Penetration and adoption of a new technology, whether mobile phones, TV, credit cards, or now Artifical Intelligence (AI) for insurance typically follow a ‘S’ curve.
The path of tech adoption follow this path. Early on, a few users bet heavily on the innovation, these people and companies are looking to change quickly and take advantage – these companies maybe very disruptive. Then, over time, as more companies ‘rush’ to invest and embrace the technology to capture the potential gains, protecting their markets and customers. As the cycle moves on the market opportunities for nonadopters dwindle. The cycle draws to a close with slow movers suffering damage and potentially going our of business.
This timeline shows how Artifical Intelligence has come together and pulled systems and tools from many different tech innovations to get to where we are today, a place where AI tech is finally useful to businesses.
A study by McKinsey suggests that faced with AI-fuelled competitive threats, companies are twice as likely to embrace AI as they were to adopt other new technologies in past technology cycles. This means that the pace of change for AI adoption will be fast.
Artifical Intelligence, AI, or as we call it Augmented Insurance, is here. AI tech helps, and augments companies and process in all areas. The insurance industry is one based on data yet has not kept up with tech investment. This makes it open for AI. Companies like MIC Global, who adopt AI will be here in 5 or 10 years time, others may not be.
Is ‘augmented insurance’ the way forward?
Are we too late? No. Only a fraction of companies have tried AI across their whole enterprise, i.e. are a ‘power user’. Another big block of companies have tested AI to a limited extent. The majority of companies have yet to adopt any AI technologies at all. This is the normal position, think about where we were in early 2000 with the adoption of the internet as a sales process. There were only a few companies emerging like Amazon. Today we see the results – Amazon and the like are strong and growing, many companies have fallen by the wayside and everyone can agree that using the internet is a must for any company.
We, MIC Global, are developing AI tools and solution to help power our sales and claims processes and to build the payment of claims into the whole process. MIC Global has a strong base in digital capabilities giving us a huge benefit, since we can move more quickly to adopt AI. We work with partners and teams that can work with us and are focused on being digital, bringing our brand of Augmented Insurance to them in innovative ways.
How will things change going forward? We believe that as the world move towards 2022-25; customers, business and consumers will be demanding more open and digitally aware businesses to be dealing with their insurance and finances.
This will be driven by the development of innovative propositions, such as blockchain, voice tech and AI, whose benefits will outweigh current concerns around sharing data, infact the idea of ‘owning’ and sharing data itself will change.
New customer propositions that are enabled or enhanced by AI and open business will include:
- Policy aggregation to provide single view of clauses, limits and risks across different policies.
- Risk management tools using data analytics to identify risk patterns to enable people and businesses to be more in charge of their own risk profiles.
- Parametric policies and tools to work with customer and companies.
- Tailored product and customization of products based on risk, profiles & transaction history, such as specific event-based or time-based policies.
- Increased access to insurance for micro customers due to improved access to data and micro-payments.
- Internet of Things (IoT) allowing passive and active collection of data and turning policy cover on and off as the profile of use changes.
