"Insurers must embrace ethical frameworks and data rigour as their guiding principle to realise the full value of GenAI technology."
- Andrew Pollard, Insurance Specialist at SAS UK & Ireland
Of those surveyed (236), 89% of insurance sector respondents said their organisation planned to invest in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) next year, with 92% having a dedicated GenAI budget in the works.
The most popular reason for investing in GenAI was improving customer satisfaction and retention (81%), followed by reducing operational costs and time savings (76%) and enhanced risk management and compliance measures (72%).
Already, 68% of insurance sector respondents surveyed use some form of GenAI in their professional roles at least once a week - 22% said they use GenAI daily. Although only 11% said their organisation had fully implemented GenAI, 44% indicated they were already in the process of implementing it. It’s quite likely that 55% of insurers will likely have GenAI in place before the new year.
Notably, insurance sector respondents were more anxious about GenAI ethics than their counterparts in other industries. 59% indicated concern about the ethical implications of their organisation’s GenAI - 7% higher than the cross-industry average.
Unfortunately, only 5% of insurance respondents described their organisation’s GenAI governance framework was ‘well-established and comprehensive’. 57% reported that their organisation’s framework was ‘in development’ whilst 27% called their framework ‘ad hoc or informal’. Worryingly, 11% said their ethical frameworks were ‘non-existent’.
These ethical concerns are equally regulatory compliance worries, with just one in ten (11%) of insurance sector respondents confirming their organisation is fully prepared to comply with current & upcoming GenAI regulations.
“GenAI is not a silver bullet, but insurers are finding it can provide many more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, including in areas that have previously proven quite difficult, like the ingestion of unstructured data. Claims & underwriting are prime examples where GenAI is helping the human in the loop extract insights and make better decisions,” explained Joe Rowe, Data & AI Insurance Lead for UK, Ireland & Africa at Accenture.
He said: “The use of GenAI is progressing quite rapidly, but to develop it responsibly, insurers must have an alignment of people, processes & technology, all working together to drive use cases from experimentation into operations and production. Proper governance requires focus & investment.”
Andrew Pollard, Insurance Specialist at SAS UK & Ireland, added: “While insurance is often seen as a slow-moving industry, insurers are emerging as frontrunners in the GenAI space, shown by significant investment and enthusiasm. To unlock its potential, however, responsible innovation must be embraced, and strong policies & processes put in place to protect customers and ensure the integrity of data used in models.
“The next step is clear. Insurers must embrace ethical frameworks and data rigour as their guiding principle to realise the full value of GenAI technology,” he concluded.
