Shenton Brokers, a Singapore-based provider of direct insurance and reinsurance broking services, has launched its online portal to serve its online and SME clients.

In a statement by the company, it said that the online portal is targeted at younger and more tech-savvy customers, who are looking for 24/7 self-serve tools and do not want to pay for the added service of insurance agents.

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The platform applies robotics process automation (RPA), together with optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language process (NLP) technology to facilitate manual data extraction, entry, and processing tasks.

 A typical search will display 15 to 30 policies from various insurers. Once a customer comes on board, they can access their policy, request changes, and file claims using their Shenton Brokers account, the statement added.

According to Shenton Brokers, a mobile app is under development to complement this browser-based service.

“We created a business model that simplifies the entire process of buying insurance – from comparing quotes to buying a policy,” said Vivien Chua, chief technology officer of Shenton Brokers. “Using technology, we are able to pass the cost-savings readily to the customer so that they do not need to pay the commissions that the insurance industry is known for.”