Insurance industry technology experts are no doubt still digesting the recent 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Life and P&C Insurance report, chock full of details and prescriptions on everything from automating claims processing to making the most of the “metaverse.” With coverage of more than 20 technologies, it’s a lot to digest, but I’m here to help with respect to topics closest to my heart: artificial intelligence, including generative AI, and intelligent document processing.

The Gartner hype cycle report is essentially an assessment of various technologies that help insurance companies prioritize their tech investments. It just so happens it’s the second report in recent weeks (after the Everest Group PEAK Matrix report on Intelligent Document Processing) that recognizes the value Indico Data and its intelligent intake solution bring to the insurance technology table.

AI is “ubiquitous” in insurance – but obstacles remain

Let’s start with AI, given how much hype it’s been getting lately thanks to ChatGPT.

Among the key themes in the report was that “artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous.” That prompted Gartner to remove AI as a single category “due to its emergence as an embedded element in a plethora of other technologies across the Hype Cycle.” AI adoption has become more pervasive due to its incorporation into other advanced technologies, the report said. “This is reflected with the additional entry of Generative AI.”

I’ll second that notion, especially given Indico Data was among the first to recognize the power of Generative AI. Indeed, Indico was the first to market with a GPT-based custom model solution for the enterprise.

Another theme was that “disillusionment and realignment occur” with some insurance technologies. Low code/no code solutions, for example, are headed to the Trough of Disillusionment. “CIOs should learn from this and track technologies carefully and evaluate technologies’ true value to deliver on business outcomes,” the report said.

Well, yeah, of course they should, and I hope everyone does. They’ll learn how AI projects generally have a success rate of around 11%, while projects based on the Indico platform have a success rate of 97%.

Gartner also says privacy and regulation uncertainty is slowing down some insurance technologies, especially in healthcare. “Privacy will also alter the future speed of emerging technologies like generative AI as people become more concerned with their data,” Gartner said.

Yes, I agree with that, too. But the answer is pretty simple: explainable AI. If you don’t understand what your AI platform is doing with your data or why it gives you the answers it does, it’s not explainable and could indeed be opening you up to regulatory and privacy issues.

Here’s a theme I have no qualms with: Automation thrives. “Automation technologies continue to mature, with vendors adding more industry-aligned content, adding analytics for intelligence, and building digital accelerators of prebuilt insurance content. Meanwhile, insurers continue to expand their adoption and use a broader set of technologies.”  Yes, I’m seeing all of that every day with insurance customers.

Related content: 2023 Gartner® Report: Hype Cycle™ for Digital Life and P&C Insurance

Intelligent document processing for insurance

The report provides a synopsis of Gartner thinking on more than 20 technologies, including the intelligent document processing (IDP) space.

“IDP is increasingly important to create operational efficiencies in underwriting, claims, supply chain management processes that need to extract large amounts of information from semi-structured and unstructured data for further analysis,” Gartner said. The report correctly points out that IDP plays a role in insurance use cases involving human-centric processes such as underwriting, commercial broker submissions, and claims.

Many of the IDP business impacts Gartner cites apply specifically to the intelligent intake category where Indico plays. They include:

• Reducing the amount of human labor required to process documents
• Extracting relevant data from documents with various formats for further analysis and preprocessing, while reducing error rates
• Accelerating underwriting and claims decision making, which improves customer and broker service levels

The drivers prompting insurance companies to adopt IDP also speak squarely to the value of intelligent intake. They include reducing the time employees spend extracting data from various non-standard forms. That’s especially true for underwriting and claims knowledge workers, who can “refocus on decision making and value add tasks,” the report notes. Insurance firms also seek out IDP because they require “high accuracy, consistency and efficiency in extraction and automation processes,” the report said.

Overcoming IDP obstacles

One part of the report I found particularly rewarding was the section on IDP obstacles – because Indico Data literally has answers for all of them. (Perhaps that’s why we were included among the “sample vendors” for IDP.)

Sample obstacles include:

• Insurance companies looking for enhanced features to cater to wider uses cases and growing business needs. We got that covered, as the Indico platform is flexible to enough to tackle virtually any intelligent intake use case, not just a few canned ones.
• Too much investment in model training and skills to develop complete models. The Indico platform is meant to be used by insurance company employees on the front lines, those who actually perform the processes in question. As such, it’s inherently simple to use – no IT involvement required.
• Users skeptical of IDP accuracy. With Indico, you get a predicted accuracy rate as you build models. And accuracy gets better over time with staggered loop learning, which captures user corrections and builds them into the model.
• “Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to increase the speed and accuracy of text extraction, however existing IDP solutions will take their time to replatform,” Gartner said. Not Indico. We built our models on LLMs from the get-go and have been adding more as they emerge – like GPT.

Those are a few of my takeaways from the latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Life and P&C Insurance report. It is an exhaustive document that I would encourage anyone who has a role in insurance industry technology to read. You can download it from here for free.

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