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Being in the business for the past 19 years, IFFCO Tokio General Insurance has adopted an omnichannel distribution strategy, propelled by a strong IT backbone, to reach different customer segments as per their convenience.

But Artificial Intelligence is helping the insurer to go a step further.

"We leverage AI for image processing to analyse the extent of the damaged vehicle (personal cars), which helps us to generate a list of repairable and replaceable parts that were damaged in the accident. Within a few minutes, the assessment and the cost are given to the customer, which they can either accept or reject. If the assessment gets accepted, the payment is made within fifteen minutes directly to the customers bank account," Seema Gaur, ED & Head- IT, IFFCO Tokio General Insurance said. The company has automated claim settlement with Artificial Intelligence.

In the absence of AI, these photographs were assessed by claim officers, and it was tedious and manual jobs, as they took a few hours to assess the damage. With the AI-based app, the list of damaged parts is generated within minutes along with a cost. It is now much more convenient for claim officers, as they are now in a better position to justify the assessment to the claimant.

Artificial Intelligence has helped transform businesses. For large companies and industries, artificial intelligence is generating new avenues for growth and profitability.

Being an old and highly regulated industry that insurance is, companies have comparatively taken up technological implementations rather fast. Insurance no longer seems to be steeped in manual, paper based processes that are slow. McKinsey's estimates a potential annual value of $1.1 trillion, if artificial intelligence is fully applied to the insurance industry.

With all the benefits and cost saving ratios that this technology has given, organisations are more keen to adopt this in the times to come.

Take for example, Kotak Life Insurance, a life insurance business of Kotak Mahindra Bank that decided to automate the process of verifying whether the the customer receiving annuity from its insurance is still alive or not. The process was especially cumbersome for older people who had to visit the branch to prove that they are still alive, a not so good customer experience. But that has completely changed with the help of AI.

Explaining the process, Kirti Patil, Senior EVP- IT & CTO, Kotak Life Insurance says, "To submit the certificate of existence, a user had to visit the branch. It was a time consuming process for both customers and the company. We automated this process and made it digital by using Artificial Intelligence. Now, the user can simply submit a photograph through application and the intelligent algorithms verify whether the person is alive or not."

Kotak is also working on analytics-based marketing communications and AI based fraud analysis.

One key reason why AI will prove to be crucial is the ever increasing datafication of business interactions, private life and public life. AI can be used to effectively assess drivers and trends in the insurance industry and secure efficiency gains.

According to Deloitte, AI is helping insurers by predicting risk with greater accuracy, customizing products and using enhanced foresight to rapidly deploy new products. It allows institutions to be more agile, enabling them to deploy new products in response to emerging risk.

Artificial Intelligence is not only helping organisations to evaluate claims easily but is also helping them provide real time assistance to their customers. Walking on similar lines, Max Life Insurance is trying to reduce the distance with its customers with Artificial Intelligence.

"The moment you can reduce the distance between a company and the customer to zero, that is digital. So digital is not about technology from our point of view, digital is about the customer, digital is about reducing distance of communication and optimizing the ease of engagement. We are achieving it with the help of AI and bot capabilities with big data analytics, said Manik Nangia, Chief Digital Officer & Director Marketing, Max Life Insurance.

To service its customers in an instant, accurate and efficient manner, Max Life Insurance has leveraged Artificially Intelligent technologies. Its website offers a live chat supported by a bot that is constantly learning and providing more and more information to customers in a timely and precise manner.

While Insurance seems to be a space, companies have explored the capabilities of AI, there still remains some business which are yet to find the right use cases for them. To leap from AI mystery to mastery, practitioners need to bridge the gap in understanding the technologys inner workings and its business value proposition.

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Here's how AI is helping Indian Insurance industry improve customer experience - ETCIO.com