What is the contribution of modern technology to foreign insurance?

Overview of modern technologies used by foreign insurers. Smart homes, telemedicine for the poorest countries in Africa, cryptographic insurance, and much more in the blog of Arseniy Poyarkov, CEO of Digital Rating Agency for Crypto Insurance Service www.cryptoins.io

The generation of millennials wants not only to make purchases without leaving home, with one click of the mouse or with one touch of the screen but also to choose a service among all possible providers in the world. Insurers still do not suspect, but cross-country competition may soon touch them.
Some people remember how they waited a few days for a response from the underwriters who quoted the risk. Now everything is different. The model according to which insurance is a service sector with low seller involvement is a thing of the past. Modern technologies and analysis of information from different channels enable insurers to get to know their customers better and respond to their needs more quickly.
Smart homes will soon become part of the modern world and will help to avoid many insurance claims. German-based company GROHE has taken the first step. The company’s specialists invented GROHE Sense — a smart water sensor. The GROHE Sense Guard device installed at home serves as a smart water controller. It measures a temperature in the system, indicating a danger of freezing or detecting leaks, and is able to automatically shut off a water supply. GROHE works with building insurers and household insurers in Germany and is a partner of insurance companies in Sweden and Denmark.

Insurers need to analyze the innovation landscape, compare their own technological capabilities with Insurtech solutions and consider options for moving forward. For example, ZhongAn, founded in 2013 and today numbering tens of millions of customers, does not have a single office and offers customers to purchase services online. The total price of a product is individually selected for each client. There are several unusual services even for the Russian client in their portfolio, such as insurance against adverse weather conditions for weddings, insurance against unauthorized use of a phone.

Motor types of insurance also need to be modernized and applied innovations — from electronic notification of an insured event using confirmatory videos or images from the scene to automated payment of insured damage. This solution is already being implemented and tested in various European markets by Xtract. The company created a platform for handling insurance claims that simplifies the interaction of the insurer with the client. The platform records crash data at the time of the impact from any connected telematics device and recreates the incident of the event before, during, and after on the claim handling platform, then to evaluate it. It became possible to reduce the time to make a decision about liability, better identify fraud and improve the accuracy of damage assessment.

Artificial intelligence tools gradually penetrate many stages of the “client’s path”: from the search for a product to its purchase. They will change our usual service requirements, distribution channels, underwriting and pricing model. Tools based on machine learning and chatbots processing are particularly innovative in the insurance industry. For example, the British-Israeli startup Pixoneye analyzes personal photo galleries using machine learning to help them better understand their consumers and consolidate an experience of certain consumers. Pixoneye is able to anticipate events in the lives of customers before they occur, such as relocation, childbirth or going on vacation. This gives the company the opportunity to take the initiative and offer a personalized product to its customers.

London-based company Wrisk changes the concept of insurance. Clients are provided with a Wrisk application that contains the information necessary to understand their risk profile. The more information provided, the more accurate the assessment becomes, allowing customers to lower their premiums. Users can update their data and manage policies anytime, anywhere, and changes take effect immediately.
Insurance should be personalized, affordable and flexible. BIMA has come up with an interesting solution. Its idea is to provide insurance services to residents in developing countries, where the spread of mobile communications is relatively high and insurance coverage is low. BIMA mobile medical service allows everyone to easily and quickly obtain medical advice from a qualified doctor using telemedicine. Membership is available in prepaid packages for 3, 6 or 12 months and includes an unlimited telephone consultation with a qualified doctor for the whole family. Currently, the company’s customers are about 20 million people in 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 93% of BIMA clients live on less than $10 per day, and 80–95% never had access to other insurance.

Bloomberg writes according to industry insiders, a new hot business is crypto insurance. The combination of classic insurance products and the achievements of crypto economics makes it possible to create new products and new technological solutions for underwriting and claims settlement. There is a popular in Asia company-pioneer Crypto Insurance on the market, which provides legal insurance of crypto assets on crypto exchanges or wallets. It covers the loss of user funds from cyber attacks on the top exchanges, theft, fraud, illegal actions of staff, management or owners of crypto platforms that led to the loss of customer funds. It is noteworthy that the clients of the platform now are both Chinese, and Americans and Russians.
Russian and Asian insurers should learn foreign experience.

They should understand there are many opportunities and ideas for the development and modernization of the insurance market, in addition to improving the efficiency of traditional ways and reducing costs.