It’s the end of March, the weather has gotten a bit warmer, every single day includes at least a little bit of precipitation and everyone is struggling to figure out if they should put their sweaters up in the attic or not, because they all know that as soon as they do it will be like 30 degrees out again and they’ll regret it.
This can mean only one thing – IT’S BASEBALL SEASON AGAIN!
Opening day was officially yesterday, and it literally started with a bang. The first pitch of the new season was clubbed over the right field wall by Ian Happ of the Cubs. And we at the Insurance Technology Insider couldn’t be happier.
Why are we so excited? Well, we’re huge baseball fans for starters.
The start of the new baseball season is more than just the reintroduction of one of our favorite sports into our lives. It’s a reinvigorating time – things start blooming, the weather starts to warm up, people start going outside and enjoying nature again. It’s the harbinger of spring and summer, and hotdogs, and cold beers on a hot day.
Baseball is also as American as you can get…like Lady Liberty chowing down on a slice of apple pie and rocking out to Springsteen while driving a supercharged Ford Mustang through purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain.
But more than that, baseball is a game that GETS IT when it comes to technology. For a game that dates back to the 19th century, it can actually be pretty progressive when it comes to innovation. Advanced analytics? Big data? All of those things were being talked about a decade and a half ago during the improbable success of the “Moneyball” Oakland A’s.
Now they’re everywhere – including in insurance.
In the spirit of baseball – and America – we’re going to dedicate this week’s insurance news roundup to the use of Big Data and data analytics – as well as the technologies that they enable – like machine learning and AI. Because if those technologies are helping to make an already great game even better…then imagine what they can do for the insurance industry.
Now…PLAY BALL!
5 Ways MassMutual’s AI Systems Could Evolve
Much like how data about ball players can help AI tools determine what kind of season they’ll have, or what impact they could potentially have on a roster, data and AI are also helping insurance companies gain insights into what could be in the cards for life insurance customers. At least, that’s what MassMutual’s Sears Merritt is looking to do.
According to this article by ThinkAdvisor, “Merritt has been the chief data scientist at Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company since 2015, and he is one of the fathers of the artificial intelligence (AI) technology inside the silicon brains of Haven Life, MassMutual’s web-based life insurance sales startup.” And what Sears has been able to accomplish with customer data is pretty astonishing.
Utilizing about 40 different data points about a prospective life insurance customer, Sear’s LifeScore360 AI tool can identify and assign an individual a much more accurate risk score. These risk scores can help life insurance companies ensure that they’re better pricing their plans, and can also ensure that they’re not taking on unnecessary risk with new policies.
But this is just the beginning. Click through to the article to read about ways that these AI systems could continue to mature and evolve, and to learn about the other areas of insurance that Sears and MassMutual think can benefit from this technology.
Root Insurance Closes $51 Million Investment to Expand Customized Auto Insurance
Congratulations to Root Insurance on closing $51 Million in Series C funding. This round of investment was led by Redpoint Ventures and Scale Venture Partners, with existing partners Ribbit Capital and Silicon Valley Bank Capital Partners participating as well.
But those investors aren’t the only ones that are ultimately going to benefit from the success of Root Insurance – car insurance customers may just benefit as well.
That’s because Root’s method and strategy for pricing car insurance policies diverges from the norm – instead of simply using demographics to determine risk, they actually use data about a prospective customer’s driving habits.
The company considers this approach to be both more accurate and more fair, since it ensures that a driver’s insurance premiums aren’t determined by being lumped into a particular demographic, but – rather – by how they actually operate their automobiles <GASP>.
The end benefit of this approach to risk assessment and pricing for the company is more accurate risk profiles and more accurate plan pricing. The benefit to customers – especially those that don’t drive like mad men – are decreased premiums that more accurately reflect their safe driving habits.
Yes, AI Will Affect The Future Of Life Insurance — Here’s How
So far, we’ve looked at companies and technologies that use AI and data to help insurance companies and providers better assess risk and set policy premiums, but there could be a lot more to the implementation of AI in insurance than simply setting prices.
In this recent article in Forbes, they look at some of the other ways that AI can revolutionize insurance – specifically life insurance.
One of those ways is in helping to spot incomplete and inconsistent information in insurance forms and applications, helping to eliminate problems that slow down the application and claims processes – eliminating backlogs and leading to happier customers. Another benefit could be in identifying patterns and behaviors in advance that could indicate fraudulent behavior.
Read the article at the link above to learn more about the large role that AI can play in insurance, and to get a better understanding of why Accenture claims that, “75% of insurance executives believe AI has the capacity to significantly affect the insurance industry in as little as three years.”
