AI helping insurers cover losses more proactively – Guidewire

Artificial intelligence (AI) is providing insurers with the opportunity to move towards a more proactive approach when it comes to covering losses, according to Guidewire’s Rene Schoenauer.

Speaking to Insurance Times at the Guidewire Conference last week (17-20 November 2024), the director of product marketing for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) said new technology was making insurance ”more transparent, accessible and easier to understand [for] consumers”.

“Insurers have this essential, important role,” he said.

”[They] need to be able to react quicker, in a more agile [and] flexible way.”

Schoenauer felt AI was key to this, with him noting that this was helping the industry move away from traditional models.

For example, AI is allowing firms to introduce parametric models, which is where the trigger and claims payout are preset, meaning claims processing time is reduced.

Schoenauer said: “[AI] is really about enabling the people, [which is] all the stakeholders in the insurance lifecycle.”

“There are lots of opportunities to do beneficial things [with AI].

”One of the things is risk mitigation, moving away from this traditional model of covering losses and more towards a proactive approach.”

Other trends

While AI was named as the top trend by Schoenauer, he also noted that embedded insurance was still popular.

Embedded insurance is a way for businesses to include insurance policies as an add-on to sales journeys.

Schoenauer said: “Technology makes it easier and maybe gives the opportunity to create more granular products, micro insurance [and] personalised services.”

The cloud was also noted as a trend by Schoenauer. He said this after Diego Devalle, Guidewire’s chief product development officer, presented a demo with his team of a mock system they had created using data they had asked the audience for on the first day of the conference.

Around 3,000 delegates submitted data, which equated to 3,000 policies and $1.7m (£1.35m) in premium.

The experiment was conducted to prove how quickly a system can be created using a cloud platform.