During panel 1, Innovate to Elevate: Synergizing Creativity, Humanity, and Engineering for Exponential Growth, attendees heard from thought leaders as they shared industry best practices. Below is a recap of this event.

Panel Speakers

• Emily Wilhoit - Chief Marketing Officer, Blue Acorn iCi
• Karthick Palaniswamy - Senior Vice President, Head of Software Development & Delivery, Arch Capital Group Ltd
• Suhas Krishna - Principal, Digital Strategy Group - Financial Services and Insurance, Adobe
• Avi Greenfield - Vice President of Product Management, Quadient

Embracing Innovation

The session started with each speaker reinforcing that insurance companies must embrace innovation. As new technologies emerge rapidly, consumers expect to engage with brands and organizations no matter what industry they are in.

To emphasize the importance of constantly innovating, Greenfield stated, “There’s a great opportunity to augment the opportunity of the people. AI is useful for improving the quality of communication that insurers have with their customers.”

Palaniswamy agreed, “Insurers have to embrace innovation. Focus on improving AI readiness and maturity. 2023 was the year to start building a proof of concept.”

Improving Customer Experiences

AI should complement human-centric interactions rather than replace them entirely. The speakers explained how customer support teams have current AI capabilities to understand customer calls. By using AI monitors, teams can proactively reach out to customers to offer differentiated customer experiences.

While there are many benefits to AI, all of the speakers agreed that AI models are only as good as the data, and there is an opportunity for data exchange between policy and policyholders.

Krishna weighed in on Adobe’s standpoint, “Customer experience and expectations is what Adobe is trying to solve for. Carriers are reimagining the role of the human touch by widening their reach. When it comes to personalization, deepening the engagement with quotes or bundled offers. The next frontier is the life stage trigger, treating the household as a unit instead of a single individual, and it starts with data.”

Strategies to Encourage Innovation

Many comparisons were made to the banking industry, mentioning that when online banking came into play, many people assumed branches would disappear, but that didn’t happen. All of the speakers concluded that people like having a human touch, and AI won’t replace jobs; but instead it will be used to augment human efforts. There was a lot of positive sentiment around encouraging teams to understand how AI works to build confidence and achieve the promise of AI.

Are you interested in learning more about how AI can help your organization improve customer experiences? Contact Blue Acorn iCi for more information.