For insurtechs, AI is the latest wobble of a familiar tightrope

At the Insurtech Connect conference, I spoke with a handful of insurtech marketers and founders about their use of artificial intelligence. The biggest takeaway was that, while AI is disruptive and exciting, it's also just the latest technology to present a delicate but familiar messaging challenge: manage the tension between the risk-averse stakeholders on the "insure" side of the industry and those with a much greater appetite for uncertainty on the "tech" side.

Henriette Fleishmann, CEO of virtual property assessment firm Hosta, captured the challenge best: "We are operating in an industry that is massively risk-averse, and that's for a good reason. But AI in life and business will soon be like electricity – essential, invisible, ubiquitous."

Luckily, innovative leaders in the space are deftly navigating this challenge. Here, I highlight four strategies used by the folks I talked to that can help anyone in a similar position.

1. Focus on Problems and Solutions

In the last year, marketers had to say something about AI – and preferably generative AI – to stay relevant. Insurtechs that have products that rely on AI mostly aren't talking about it – at least not as a primary point.

"The problem statement is more important than the technology," said Raj Subramanian, COO at GoSure.ai, a low-code tech firm that powers the last mile in connectivity for commercial insurance. "Technology is to address the suffering of the human."

This was a sentiment I heard again and again.

"Customers care more about the value we're providing than the specific tools we use to accomplish that," said Bex Kilkelly, head of business development at workplace safety computer vision firm Protex AI.

In fact, nearly everyone I spoke with agreed: even if AI is in your name and is core to how your product works, it's generally best to focus on problems and solutions.

Spiro Skias, owner of Ink Digital Marketing, a digital marketing firm that helps insurtechs get acquired, put it bluntly: "Nobody's here to buy AI," he said. "They want to buy a solution."

Fair enough. But as a marketer myself, I know there is some value to acknowledging when you use a technology that's currently having a moment. So I pressed the point, asking insurtech leaders whether they ever mentioned their AI in marketing materials. The short answer: for the right people.

2. Tailor Messaging by Audience Segment

"We take an approach that reflects [the] varying degrees of sophistication with our customers. Some are very sophisticated. They're well on their way through digital transformation. They understand AI," said Colby Tunick, CEO of Refocus AI, which helps insurance businesses boost retention. 

Others, he noted, are coming directly from binders and spreadsheets into Refocus AI's technology. In those cases, he said, "we prefer to talk about the problems to be solved."

Still, it's not as if these categories – AI-savvy and not AI-savvy – are static.

"A lot more people have become way more aware about what AI is because of how abundant news about AI is," said Shivam Kumar, sales manager at Klear.ai, a firm that does risk and claims management via AI. Shivam noted one result of ChatGPT's explosion onto the scene was a kind of "exponential growth" of market AI education.

And while a certain amount of AI education may be happening by osmosis, there may also be a benefit to proactively educating customers about what they need to know to appreciate the value of a cutting-edge insurtech solution.

Subramanian, for example, noted that GoSure.ai periodically offers webinars about different technologies and where the industry will likely be in three to five years.

Taking on education in marketing materials can pay dividends in multiple ways. 

3. Address the (Perceived) Risks Head On

Tunick summarized the state of perceived risk well: "AI is part of everyone's psyche at this point," he said. "It's not going away, but that doesn't mean people trust what it produces."

But the AI risks many insurtechs face aren't necessarily the ones that get top billing in headlines. Bias, for example, wasn't a concern for many of the folks I talked to. Vivek Rao, co-founder and CEO of Foundation AI, which uses AI to extract information from documents, explained that their customers weren't worried about bias because their tech doesn't make decisions.

"But we are automating manual work, so there is always this question of eliminating jobs," he said. However, Foundation AI's customers "can't find people to do this type of work," he said, because "this type of work just sucks."

A much bigger concern among the folks I spoke to was data security and management. Kyle Geoghan, co-founder and CEO of Indemn, which builds large language models (LLMs) to help people learn about and buy insurance, notes that this concern is similar to what we saw when insurance companies moved from data centers to the cloud, or when sharing data on early web forms became popular.

"It's really just a process of improving the model, proving the system, and working within its limitations," he said.

Kumar echoed Geoghan's point about the importance of data security. And Kilkelly noted that employee privacy is also hugely important: her company applies AI algorithms to CCTV footage to help organizations reduce the risk of workplace injuries.

There's a regulatory component to consider, too. As Subramanian pointed out, the stakes are different when your tech deals with HIPAA-protected information, a situation that doesn't apply to any of the people I talked to.

4. Understand the Tradeoffs of Each Messaging Tactic

Of course, there's no perfect choice when deciding when and whether to message about a new technology.

"Right now," said Don Halliwell, who leads marketing at collaborative risk management firm TrustLayer, "If you don't say [that you use AI], the presumption is that you don't have it."

That can hurt a startup's ability to generate buzz from, say, investors likely to be bullish on cutting-edge tech. And there is a limited window of opportunity in which mentioning AI can generate that buzz.

"We'll hit AI buzzword fatigue in 18 months or less," predicted Scott Griffith, chief marketing and sales officer at Market Force, a CX solutions company.

Depending on the audience, actually, we may already be there. Rao, gesturing to the many mentions of AI on the booths around the conference, suggested that we're approaching the trough of disillusionment for AI, especially in places where it's not necessary and just being used for marketing purposes.

In other words: position AI wrong or pitch it to the wrong market, and it might actually hurt you.

AI may be the new kid on the technology block, but the messaging challenges it presents insurtech leaders are familiar. The industry has always had to move steadily toward the horizon of new tech while finding ways to encourage adoption among traditionalists.

The good news is that the AI communications playbook is one insurtech leaders will be able to turn to again and again as new technologies open additional doors of possibility for the insurance industry.