Transcript:
Patti Harman (00:06):
Welcome to the DigIn podcast. I'm Patti Harman, editor in chief of Digital Insurance, and today we're talking about the evolving role of AI in the insurance industry. You've probably heard it many times by now, but if you're not integrating some aspect of artificial intelligence or AI into your processes, you're already behind the curve. Is the thought of adding AI into your daily routines and responsibilities daunting? Yes, it is. I'm going to guess. Does it come with some risks? Definitely. Can you afford not to implement AI into your company? No, you can't. Joining me today to discuss all of this and more is Andy Moss, CEO and co-founder of Send, a platform designed to help manage the underwriting process. Thank you so much for joining us today, Andy.
Andy Moss (00:56):
Hi Patti. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm really excited to be talking to you.
Patti Harman (01:00):
So let's start, because many of us in the industry, you didn't start your career in insurance. Would you mind sharing with our audience a little bit about your background and how you ended up launching an in InsurTech?
Andy Moss (01:14):
Sure. I think it's an interesting question because whenever I talk to people about this, I've asked people over the years, how did you end up in insurance? And only one person has ever said to me it was on purpose, but there's a lot of happy accidents in terms of people ending up in the industry. So that was me. I was a career sort of a software engineer, a few years in getting going in my career, and it was really simple. My oldest son was born and I was doing a long commute into London and I thought, I need a job locally. So looked around and it's really interesting for some of the things we're going to talk about today. I ended up working for the back office for the London Market Bureau. So the London Market Bureau was really interesting at the time, this was early two thousands and I go from this role, I was at the BBC in the radio music department, go from something that felt really high-tech going into a local office near where I lived.
(02:21):
It was short drive, but they had trolleys with paperwork, they had suitcases with paperwork going between offices and going from London to the back offices, and people were taking work off the trolleys and keying it into systems. So it's fascinating, really a lot of manual effort, a lot of stuff that I thought, is this really happening? This stuff still happened. And yeah, that's kind of how I ended up in the industry and I've done a number of roles in the insurance industry and ended up deciding to start send with a couple of guys I've worked with in the industry back in 2016. We got going around then and went full-time in 2019 and here we are.
Patti Harman (03:09):
I think it's a fascinating industry and I've been covering it probably for about 30 years or so now, and when I find people who are new to the industry, I'm like, you're never going to leave because it's going to be far more than you ever imagined. And as you learn more and more, you learn just what a complicated and interesting industry this is. So the insurance industry has seen numerous InsurTech startups over the last 10 years or so. How do you see the relationship between insurance carriers and InsurTechs evolving?
Andy Moss (03:42):
It's an interesting time. I think the pattern I'm seeing right now is if you think back to a few years ago, I think a lot of carriers were going out to the market to talk to InsurTechs. When I say in InsurTech, by the way, just to clarify terminology, I mean technology providers in the insurance and industry as opposed to new insurers that are tech enabled. I'm talking about the tech guys where I'm from and that's what I know most about. But we'd see carriers going out to the market to get interesting tech. So whether it's around distribution, analytics, AI, ingestion, triaging, that sort of thing. Well, I think what we see at the moment is I think there's been a shift where since Chat GPT-3 0.5 came out a few years ago and it's just evolved really quickly. We see carriers, it is now almost the default that they've got an in-house team doing work in that space and they're now going to market looking for not the solution that will do a whole sway of things, but will do some of the things, and they want to bring their own sort of investment and secret sauce that they've built internally.
(05:01):
I think that's going to be the theme, and I think actually that will be a competitive advantage for some of these carriers as AI continues to grab space in all of our lives. Right?
Patti Harman (05:15):
I agree. It's interesting to see how the approach to technology within the insurance industry has changed over the last couple of years. And I'm wondering, what do you think are some of the greatest benefits to InsurTechs and insurers collaborating in today's environment?
Andy Moss (05:32):
I think some of that, that is just not a new concept. The concept is decades old, but that kind of outside innovation of bringing ideas into your company, the InsurTech space, we have the advantage of seeing what's going on across many carriers, many organizations. You get that sort of self seeding thing where people move about, it's a large industry, a small industry, everyone seems to know each other and dot around between similar organizations. But that sort of step change in innovation, I think the insurers bringing their problems, and InsurTechs bringing solutions and innovating together, that's the collaboration that brings the most benefit in my mind. I think that's how we try to work with our customers and we see lots of that going on in the industry. I think also there's a lot to be said for just helping accelerate thinking for adoption of new tech.
So sometimes you get technology, we work in the underwriting space, some organizations don't have dedicated tech in that space, and you can go out and learn from what's going on. The InsurTech community can help educate what's happening in the industry, where the trends are, where the opportunities lie.
Patti Harman (06:56):
Are there any roadblocks that you're seeing as carriers are transitioning then from their legacy systems to a more digital focused environment?
Andy Moss (07:07):
Definitely the biggest thing that comes to mind would be if you think about these carriers typically have a bunch of core systems that are maybe set in a data center with lots of interesting data on and being able to leverage that. You've got all this interesting ai, you've got machine learning, you've got all this new tech and analytics to leverage, but getting that data out into the cloud into some of these platforms, I think that's hard. I think it's very easy to implement a new solution. It's very difficult to, it is a hard thing to connect it up to everything that you've already got. And I don't think it's a roadblock necessarily, maybe a speed bump or something like that, but bridging that world is essential. I don't think anyone's going to go, no one's going to make a big leap and replatform onto an agentic AI stack in the next few years. I think that most likely there's going to be a continued pattern of trying to connect the old world to the new world.
Patti Harman (08:19):
And that's a great segue into my next question. I wanted to know what areas do you think could see the greatest positive impact from implementing AI into their company processes or their different lines of businesses then?
Andy Moss (08:33):
Okay, so I think in terms of AI, I'd break it down into a couple of themes. Gen AI and machine learning perhaps, but insurance, especially commercial and specialty insurance, the more complex end of things, you find that there's a lot of documentation around and it's very conversational. There's a negotiation loop, there's the broking, there's discussions, there's text basically as well as data embedded in documents that have been typically filed over by email. So there's a great opportunity there and we work in underwriting at Send. I think we see so much opportunity there. I'll bring to life an example where we have frequently talked to customers who receive email submissions and they can't get to all of them quick enough. And this is in a space where for some of these lines of business turnaround time, how quickly you get back to the broker provide that first price, first quote, that's critical.
(09:46):
And if you don't get to it quick enough, there's no point. And there's kind of a service, there's an element, there's a relationship element. But for the carriers, there's also, they're not, even if they're trying to find a needle in the haystack, some of the haystacks they're not even looking at because they don't get to 'em quick enough and tech's got a role to play in that. Surely you can throw people at it, but then it just becomes cost prohibitive. So that opportunity piece is really interesting. I think the same thing with documentation on the claim side, we've heard some great use cases being at the forefront of adopting Gen AI. I think then I mentioned machine learning at the start. I think there's, as insurers are using more and more structured data and using that to drive processes and able to maybe pull some of this data out of legacy platforms, there's real opportunity for machine learning and looking at just streamlining and prioritizing how you're operating as a business. So yeah, I think we are seeing a lot going on at the moment.
Patti Harman (11:04):
I totally agree with that. As you see more and more companies adopting AI and machine learning, do you think that's helping to break down some of the traditional silos that we've seen within the insurance industry and within the different companies?
Andy Moss (11:21):
I think so. I think, if I'm honest, I see more of the opportunity within organizations and definitely breaking down the silos there where you have sort of a lot of handoffs in carriers where information's being passed from different teams to different teams and the opportunity to use AI to extract that or do some intelligent routing without human intervention is certainly there. Now I think in terms of the wider ecosystem, I think it's fast becoming table stakes for carriers and brokers to have some sort of strategy around it. And I think a general theme going forward is we will see that become more of a, when you're looking to your trading partners, you're looking to see their tech enables, you're looking to see that they've got the right approach to things.
Patti Harman (12:26):
Yes. It's one of the things that's been interesting for me to observe because I feel like I get a 10,000 foot view of what's going on in the industry is seeing how when technology is implemented in the underwriting department or in that area, it really does carry over into claims and into customer service and all of those other different areas of responsibility.
We're going to take a short break now. We'll be back in just a few minutes.
Welcome back to the Dig In podcast. We're chatting with Andy Moss, CEO and co-founder of Send, about the evolving role of AI and insurance. So how do you see the role of AI evolving in the insurance industry over the next few years?
Andy Moss (13:15):
I think the thing I'd like to see, and I hope this is how it plays out, is we move from the proportion of experiments to production. Instances of AI being used effectively shifts so that we're seeing more success and less of there's lots of people who are busy with AI. There's a significantly less proportion of them actually live in production delivering value to the business. And I think that's kind of a necessary thing. You need to kick the tires, work out where these things will help. But that's what I'd love to see going from experiments into production, into live use cases. That's where I'd love to see it go.
Patti Harman (14:13):
Where do you think it could have the greatest positive impact then within the insurance industry?
Andy Moss (14:20):
I think there's a sea of activity that goes on across the industry where I think there's a role for AI for businesses to be more intelligent, to do things in a smarter way. There's been a whole thing, there's been a load of podcasts. I'm sure you've seen them, Patti, and there's been loads of news that AI is coming for your jobs. I think there's some element of that for sure, but there's also a really big element of before that happens wholesale, there's a whole load of things that people do that they could do better and AI will be there, and it doesn't need to be the AI vendor that works necessarily in claims or another part of the value chain. It could just be as simple as having, I guess, the biggest impact, people having it on their desktop and being able to use it for their day-to-day work and exploring how they can be more effective, whether it's drafting emails or everyone goes to the big use cases. But you know what? I think there's a lot of simple stuff where people will feel like they can do more in their working day.
Patti Harman (15:30):
That's what we're doing within our newsroom. We're trying to figure out how can we use AI and we use it as a tool. And it's been interesting, some of the ways we've found to implement it and where it does cut down on some of those more mundane tasks or things that are going on or helping us. Sometimes, I feel like, oh, I'm saying the same thing the same way over and over again. And so I was like, let me run it through AI just to see if it changes it a little bit. So I think there's a lot of value and opportunity there going forward.
Andy Moss (16:01):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Patti Harman (16:03):
But as we're using it, does anything concern you as you see insurers or agents or brokers using it more frequently?
Andy Moss (16:11):
I think, how can I put it delicately? It doesn't work for everything yet, and anyone thinks it does. Maybe they've got data, maybe they've worked this out and they're using it on something where it's safe. But I think people are diving in and there's something lovely about that. There's something wonderful about taking the industry forward collectively, but also a reality check on is this actually working? And I think that would be my only concern that I think people will need to look before they leap and that will help with the adoption adoption curve. So getting real about it, I think there are undoubtedly a whole swath of use cases where it's state of the art will be good enough, but as you head towards more straight through processing, I'm not saying it's not possible, I just think it's kind of buyer beware. You've got to know what you're getting into.
Patti Harman (17:24):
I agree. It still has a way to go because I noticed when I'm typing now or when I'm writing an article, it's trying to guesstimate what I'm going to say and I'm like, no, and I'll type something and then it'll change it. I'm like, no, I know exactly what I want to say. I was on my way to the airport for something and I was on a shuttle bus and I was trying to type an email to somebody and AI kept changing what I was saying, and I'm going, no, that's not what I want to say. And the people were looking at me, I was like, no, I'm sorry. I'm just having a battle with AI here. And then they all just laughed. So how do you think AI will change the industry going forward? Do you think it'll improve areas like underwriting, maybe help mitigate the impact of some of the looming retirements, or help make the insurance process more transparent for customers?
Andy Moss (18:19):
Okay, so I'm going to get into a bit of prediction mode here.
Patti Harman (18:24):
Okay, that's fine.
Andy Moss (18:28):
I think for underwriting in particular, that's something we work on at Send. I think just what we're going to see is an acceleration towards straight through processing. So even if submissions are coming in on large document sets, I think there's just going to be a rising sort of line as we traverse more and more complex risk where actually automation is going to accelerate. So I think that's happening already, but I just see an acceleration in that over time. So AI's got a part to play, but so is other, I guess more vanilla tech data, APIs, workflows, et cetera. I think there's something really fascinating about, and I'm not going to misquote the stats, but we've got a population of expertise in the insurance industry that's probably stacked more towards the end of the career than the start, which means we've got a bit of a brain drain looming, and I think there's some wonderful opportunity in that space to build the digital twin of the best underwriter in the team or something like that.
(19:45):
And just that's really exciting stuff. We've had some conversations on that with folks. We're not doing anything yet, but watch this space. I think people will be looking into that because I think being able to ask, you're an underwriter, you've got a submission on your desk for some risk, and being able to go and ask What would so-and-so have done with this? How would they have looked at it? What have we looked at that's similar to this and how did we rationalize our thought process around it? That feels like something that could be in our grasp very soon. And so that's quite exciting. And I think apart from that, a general theme of helping reduce the amount of manual labor that that's going on, that's kind of not a neutral thing. There's always more to do. It seems that carriers have more work to do every year, whether it's they're using more data, they're working with more partners, they're working within a regulatory environment where they've just got more things to do. So I think there's an offset here where we'll get productivity improvements, but the space gets more complex at the same time.
Patti Harman (21:05):
Right. Very true. We've covered a lot over the last couple of minutes. Is there anything you'd like our audience to know about implementing AI or other technologies as part of their daily operations or maybe some parting words of wisdom for our listeners?
Andy Moss (21:20):
Oh dear. That's lost a lot of pressure. I think I'm going to pick out a couple of things that I said. And firstly, there's a lot of exciting things that people can do on their desktop using tools like Chat GPT or Microsoft Copilot if you've got access to things like that. I think that's a wonderful way to start, and we'll probably have in aggregate the biggest impact in the next few years going more complex than that. Know what you're getting into, know what problem you're trying to solve, and AI's not going to fix your data problem. It might help you extract some data, but if you've got bad data to work on, it's not going to sort all of that out for you. So I think some of the fundamentals around how we deploy technology and some of the things that need to be true, they'll always be true. So don't get carried away, but still be enthusiastic about what's possible.
Patti Harman (22:22):
Well, thank you so much Andy for sharing your insights with our audience. Thank you for listening to the DigIn Podcast. I produced this episode with audio production by Adnan Khan. Special thanks this week to Andy Moss of Send for joining us. Please rate us review us and subscribe to our content at www.dig-in.com/subscribe. From Digital Insurance, I'm Patti Harman, and thank you for listening.