The way generative artificial intelligence (AI) automates and speeds up the claims process for insurance customers is often discussed in industry reports and at events. However, generative AI is impacting brokers in more direct ways through what it can do with their insurance submissions. Insurers are increasingly using it to triage these submissions, including sorting, evaluating, and prioritizing the brokers’ policy applications and quote requests on behalf of clients.
“What we're seeing now is this opportunity to manage unstructured data,” said Neil Morgan (pictured), Insurance Australia Group’s (IAG) chief operating officer.
The unstructured data in these submissions includes the diverse information in policy application forms and anecdotal evidence describing the business seeking coverage and risks associated with its operations.
Morgan drew a distinction between generative AI and the traditional or classic AI that has been embedded, he said, in insurers’ processes for a number of years.
For example, in June, Suncorp announced that AI helped it process more than 7,000 food spoilage claims from Tropical Cyclone Alfred with “zero manual intervention.” “This capability is game-changing,” said Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston in a media release, “Allowing us to get money into customers’ bank accounts on the same day they lodge their claim, providing crucial immediate relief.”
Morgan said this sounded similar to IAG’s approach to big volumes of claims where a low threshold of evidence is required. The COO said generative AI goes beyond this and is proving its value in areas including submissions triage, fraud triage and considering vulnerable customers.
“So things which have less structured data is where generative AI capabilities are proving really valuable,” said Morgan.
In terms of submissions triage, he said there’s a big range in the ways brokers turn in their submissions for clients and want quotes. “The ability of these [gen AI] tools to synthesize that and turn it into the critical data elements that we need in order to quote is probably the big shift that we're seeing and investing in now,” said Morgan.
According to a recent Accenture blog, generative AI “supports intelligent email and ingestion with its ability to extract key data from submission documents and create structured outputs that can accelerate risk assessment and pricing.”
The professional services company said insurers have the potential to double their submission to quote rates. “Brokers can expect easier interactions with carriers and can deliver quotes to their customers in hours rather than days or weeks,” said the blog. The firm worked with QBE to scale the use of generative AI in its underwriting processes.
Other industry stakeholders say generative AI is accelerating the commercial insurance submission cycle, including from brokers, from faster triage to simplified quote processes.
“With AI assistants now capable of extracting, structuring, and analyzing submission data in real time, underwriters are no longer bottlenecked by manual intake or siloed risk data,” said Sathish Kumar Manimuthu, chief technology officer at NeuralMetrics. He said this sort of AI allows for pre-qualification decisions in minutes, allowing insurers to focus on risks they are more likely to write.
Through AI assistants, generative AI can pull information from underwriting guidelines, insurer appetite parameters and third-party risk data sources. “This improves quote-to-bind ratios and ensures consistency across product lines and jurisdictions,” said Manimuthu.
Meanwhile, industry stakeholders say AI assistants are empowering underwriters, not replacing them. “These tools offer contextual risk summaries, surface relevant historical data and flag potential anomalies, giving underwriters the insights to make more informed, compliant decisions,” said Manimuthu.
Generative AI advocates say the technology’s presentation of clear, structure summaries of broker submissions and its ability to identify gaps and missing information early in the process, reduces the back-and-forth communication between underwriters and brokers, enhancing broker satisfaction.
“In a competitive market, this ease of doing business can influence where business is placed,” said the blog.
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