technology

Can you teach a machine to learn? The future of insurance – and many other industries – may rest upon the answer. RGA's Jeff Heaton discusses the promise of AI...and the limitations.

Resource asked insurance industry leaders to share their thoughts on what 2019 holds for sales and profitability, information technology, customer service and human capital. We also asked them to discuss the fraud risks and business disruptors they will face.

It’s a new day not very far in the future. You wake up; your wristwatch has recorded how long you’ve slept, and monitored your heartbeat and breathing. You drive to work; car sensors track your speed and braking. You pick up some breakfast on your way, paying electronically; the transaction and the calorie content of your meal are recorded.

The marriage between technology and faster underwriting is a union the life insurance industry has encouraged for many years. Progress has been slow, but MIB Group is making headway, recently signing an agreement with Epic to utilize its electronic health records system.

The digitization of the life and health insurance business is happening at breathtaking speed. With that, the policy application and underwriting processes are being brought to the attention of people who used to be less concerned with them - such as actuaries, marketing folks and product managers.

Technological advances in biosensors and increasing amounts of heart rate data from wearable devices and electronic health records are leading to the development of more sophisticated underwriting algorithms. This data, when coupled with robust epidemiological evidence about the prognostic value of heart rate, may improve insurer understanding of cardiovascular risk and ultimately allow underwriters to better predict morbidity and mortality risk.

With advancing technology and evolving underwriting tools, it may be easy to overlook what has now become an “old standard”, the World Wide Web. 

A half century ago, physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn first coined the phrase “paradigm shift” to describe a fundamental change in assumptions. The term has since been over-applied to everything  from economics to politics – even becoming the title of an episode of Star Trek! Yet while so often misused,  I believe the term paradigm shift perfectly describes what is happening in underwriting today.

Wearables introduce a multitude of ways to monitor health. The quality and quantity of information supplied by wearables will transform how we manage our lives. There is a huge opportunity for life insurance companies to change the way we interact with our customers and to improve how we manage risk.

New global research released by Vitality, a leading behavior change platform, reveals that financial incentives combined with wearables encourage people to significantly increase their physical activity.