Artificial intelligence (AI) will create some “interesting possibilities” in terms of automating how the insurance market delivers bespoke products, according to Trevor Maynard, Head of Innovation at Lloyd’s.
Speaking at the MMC Rising Professionals’ Global Forum in London last week, Maynard addressed the “wave of technology” currently sweeping across the market, touching on robotics, augmented reality, the IoT, and the sharing economy.
“In the London market, we often promote the bespoke nature of the products that we develop,” he told attendees at the Forum. “However, through the increasing adoption of AI we will be able to really tease out the intricacies of an individual person and deliver a fully bespoke level of service in an automated way.”
Data use will also become increasingly critical as new technologies take hold, he argued, warning: “If we can’t map the data trends and understand what our claims data is telling us we will not be able to compete in the future.”
Successfully harnessing this data, Maynard added, will open up possibilities that could fundamentally change how insurers operate, such as through the exponential growth in data from IoT sensors.
“We will be in a position to take remote corrective action,” he explained, “if a sensor is triggered to stop a loss happening or to reduce its impact. Insurers themselves will play a much bigger part in risk reduction as well as being service providers.
“And we will also be able to predict losses in advance, which may lead to new types of insurance that pay out on the forecast of a loss rather than only paying out when the loss actually occurs.”
Maynard also address the rapid growth of the sharing economy in regions such as China and the UAE, which could offer huge potential for innovative insurers.
“There is a real opportunity to help the sharing economy grow quickly,” he said. “But to do so, we must be able to develop more holistic coverage that offers protection for the broad array of risks that this generates.”
