Machine vision makes paper a thing of the past for insurers
Can a notoriously slow, paper-based industry rejigger itself for the digital age? When it comes to insurance, an industry rich in data but a laggard in digitization, a software-as-a-service startup founded by former MetLife Global CIO Gary Hoberman believes a solution is at hand.
Unqork Inc., which bills itself as an insurance fulfillment platform, is using a host of artificial intelligence technologies to optimize, digitize and automate arcane and inefficient processes.
Formed last year, the 15-employee startup isn’t betting on flashy customer-facing AI applications. There are no chatbots or virtual assistants; no image recognition apps that can accurately distinguish a dog from a blueberry muffin.
Instead, the Unqork platform lives under the covers of the sales processes, according to Bassam Chaptini, chief analytics officer at Unqork and former McKinsey partner in the data and analytics practice. One of the most tangible examples of how Unqork is using AI to make insurance processes more efficient is by applying machine vision — a set of technologies used to extract information from an image — to turn paper-based applications into digital assets.
“People have tried digitization a lot — it’s not for lack of trying,” Chaptini said. “There’s just been no appetite for adoption because, for decades, agents have sent paper applications to the carriers.”
But tradition is wearing thin. Between sending back applications that haven’t been filled out properly and verifying data, the back-and-forth between the agent, carrier and customer can seem endless, Chaptini said. Specifically in the life insurance business, almost 65% of all applications are still paper-based. On average, he said it takes nine exchanges between an agent and a customer in as many as 40 days to complete an application.
The life insurance industry is ripe not only for disruption, but for fixing, a phrase Unqork CEO Hoberman used to describe the company’s mission to attendees at the Pacific Insurance Conference last fall. Analyst Ellen Carney, who covers e-business at Forrester Research, agreed, asserting that life insurers are seven to eight years behind in digital capabilities compared to auto insurers. Carney is the author of a soon-to-be published benchmark study of the top life insurers in the United States and Canada on their digital sales functionality — from discovery to research to the application process. While life insurance companies successfully attracted customers to their websites and provided basic information, Carney’s research showed they fell down at explaining how much coverage a customer needed, the process of underwriting and connecting customers to the right advisor. In one case, an insurance company suggested Carney meet with an agent who was more than a four-hour drive away. “I’m not kidding,” she said. In other cases, insurance companies didn’t provide a convenient phone number to call if a customer had a question; didn’t follow up on abandoned shopping carts, even when credit card information was entered; or disappeared altogether. “We had situations where we asked to have an advisor reach out to us,” she said. “You never got to pick who the advisor was. And no one ever called you.” The digital floundering by life insurers leads to missed revenue opportunities in a growing market. Carney said interest in life insurance is up and that one-third of customers apply for life insurance spontaneously. “Yet the experience has not caught up with how we book an airline flight, how we open a checking account and how we order something from Amazon Prime,” she said.
