Artificial Intelligence & Auto Insurance
A Beautiful Friendship
Artificial Intelligence. The buzzy term you see everywhere that’s supposed to be taking over everything from cosmetics to dating to body parts to stuff you put on your eye.
Auto Insurance. You don’t want it, but you need it if you drive. Otherwise you’ll be left on the side of the race track (aka the street) with a disconnected bumper that you have to pay full price to fix, and potentially, your victim’s ruined Maserati which you will also have to pay out-of-pocket to repair.
Auto insurance is also required by 48 states and the District of Columbia. So you do need to insure your ride to make sure you don’t end up in the clink or worse, have to pay a fine.
Just how is artificial intelligence being incorporated into auto insurance? Let us count (some of) the ways.
Monitoring Driver Behavior
Monitoring driver behavior for insurance purposes isn’t new. Companies such as Progressive, however, are now applying machine learning algorithms to driver behavior for the purpose of usage-based insurance.
Their Snapshot program, which operates through a mobile app or plug-in device, incentivizes drivers to join by offering an immediate discount upon sign-up — with the promise of another discount after the driver completes six months of the Snapshot program and renews their policy with Progressive.
MetLife has a similar program called My Journey. Just like Snapshot, there’s an initial sign-up discount, with the promise of another upon renewal of the policy after six months. This one is just an app, though — no option of a plug-in device. So if you’re a flip phone person, no discount for you.
Talk to the Bot
Chatbots are being leveraged more and more throughout the insurance industry, which you can read more about here.
How so in auto insurance? For speedy customer service, of course.
AllState’s internal chatbot, ABIe (the AllState Business Insurance Expert), processes over 25,000 inquiries per month from AllState insurance agents in need of help with assisting customers — resulting in shorter wait times and happier faces.
Progressive and GEICO, however, utilize customer-facing chatbots. Progressive’s chatbot, named “Flo” after its popular commercial character, is available to chat on Facebook Messenger about claims, payment dates, and auto insurance quotes. GEICO’s virtual assistant, Kate, is available on the GEICO mobile app to also talk about claims, payment dates, and quotes — oh my!
Claims Submission
Liberty Mutual and MIT recently entered into a five-year long partnership where they will spend $25 million developing AI-enabled solutions. What sort of solutions? Back in 2017, Liberty Mutual’s tech incubator, Solaria Labs, announced the creation of the AI Auto Damage Estimator app, which does exactly what it sounds like — leverages AI to examine uploaded photos and give users a quick repair estimate post-crash.
China’s Ping An P&C launched a nationwide credit-based smart auto insurance claims solution (whew) earlier this year. This enables drivers to make claims through their smart phone by uploading photos for assessment by AI. According to the company, the swanky new system is “based on the AI smart claims credit model built with technologies such as image damage assessment, OCR bills identification, and biometrics.”
But this is just the beginning — and we’ll be keeping an eye on AI innovations in auto insurance. Want to keep up, too? Find our latest blogs on AI & InsurTech here.
