3 Ways GenAI Is Reshaping the Role of Insurance Agents
Melanie Russo
Marketbridge | Strategy Consulting for Marketing and Sales Leaders in Insurance, Healthcare & Financial Services (B2B, B2C, B2B2C)
At the 2024 Digital Insurance Summit, the CRO of Bestow Lena Chukhno 🇺🇦 , a leading digital life insurance company, made a bold proclamation: "GenAI will be as impactful to insurance as the internet." Over the past year, the adoption of GenAI has nearly doubled, reflecting a growing consensus in the industry.
Why is this happening? GenAI represents a significant evolution beyond traditional AI. While traditional AI has excelled at analyzing data, recognizing patterns, and making predictions, GenAI takes a critical leap forward. It leverages vast amounts of data not only to understand but also to create, enabling the generation of innovative and highly efficient outcomes. GenAI is a game-changer for insurance companies that have become bogged down in required paperwork and compliance activities.
Many companies are already utilizing GenAI to manage and streamline processes such as claims and underwriting, transforming their day-to-day operations. Another area undergoing momentous change is sales distribution. GenAI is reshaping the agent's role by removing administrative burdens, enhancing benefits knowledge, and enabling highly personalized consumer interactions.
Today, we will highlight three key advancements: 1) New Agent Training, 2) Virtual Agent Capabilities, and 3) Agent Video Outreach.
Training new call center agents to quote and enroll customers requires significant time and resources to ensure accuracy and compliance. GenAI has streamlined routine tasks in the call flow process by automatically guiding agents on the next best steps, as informed by the information gathered during the call. This technology enables insurers to create diverse call scenarios for agents-in-training, allowing them to experience different call flows based on customer responses.
There are even platform solutions like the Firstsource AI Coach. Immersing agents in simulated customer calls powered by AI Coach eliminates the need for traditional trainer-led mock calls. Instead, it offers real-time feedback by evaluating conversations and assigning scores. This approach streamlines training and enables scalability, ensuring consistent agent improvement.
NY Life, a mutual life insurance company, has leveraged GenAI technology to enhance its new agent training. It answered 95% of the questions that call center agents needed and enabled them to become successfully operational in just four weeks. This expedited timeline represents a notable reduction of 20% to 40% from the typical training cycle time.
Key Insight: The adoption of GenAI solutions is a victory for insurance innovators who dare to move beyond the confines of conventional training techniques. This shift promises advantages, including significantly boosting agent productivity and overall satisfaction. Moreover, it paves the way for a superior customer experience, as agents can allocate more time to meaningful customer engagements, reducing their reliance on time-consuming manual tasks.
Gone are the days of enduring endless ‘hold music' or frustrating interactions with bots when calling insurance companies that have embraced Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs guide virtual agent conversations across phone, chat, email, and SMS, providing a timely and fulfilling customer experience.
At the Digital Insurance Summit, John Spottiswood , President of Propelix, showcased a remarkable innovation from Jerry, one of the largest and fastest-growing digital brokers of home and auto insurance in the US. They have developed what they describe as a 'GitHub for AI-based virtual Agents,' and its capabilities are impressive. Skeptical? Just listen to the call John played during his presentation. It demonstrates a virtual Agent efficiently quoting an insurance policy to a caller after retrieving their vehicle information and seamlessly sending the quote to the caller's phone for confirmation.
What is truly remarkable is Jerry's nationwide coverage spans 50 states with over 60 insurers, and it can utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) to handle over 90% of calls effectively without human intervention. Best of all, the technology is future-proof because it is not married to any specific LLM. It allows you to test different LLMs for different scenarios. And the outcomes speak for themselves. Jerry saw answer response times drop from hours to less than 13 seconds and experienced a staggering $4 million reduction in operating costs.
Key Insight: This example is not about rendering Agents obsolete—most insurance leaders vehemently disagree with that notion (as do I). Instead, it highlights the power of leveraging innovative technologies to boost efficiency and elevate the overall customer experience. By providing fast and accurate service at critical touchpoints, such innovations complement agents' abilities, freeing them to address complex, nuanced, and sometimes emotional issues during customer calls. After all, humans offer something virtual agents cannot: empathy. Whether you are calling to file a claim after a tornado damaged your house or you are filing a life or health insurance claim, an empathetic agent can determine if you become a brand advocate or switch insurers.
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Bestow, a digital life insurance company, utilizes an API with Tavus to deliver personalized 'abandon quote' videos to consumers via text messages. At the Digital Insurance Summit, Lena Chukhno 🇺🇦 , Bestow's Chief Revenue Officer, highlighted this innovative approach by sharing their outreach during her presentation:
The potential of this technology is fascinating. The platform enables agents to create authentic videos using only a script. As someone deeply involved in agent research and strategy consulting, I recognize the challenge and importance of following up with leads that did not close and nurturing existing members in one's Book of Business—a traditionally time-consuming and one-dimensional motion for agents. Customizing calls-to-actions while integrating this outreach into existing workflows offers viable options that differentiate the customer experience in a crowded marketplace.
Key Insight: Generative AI video promises to transform how agents engage with consumers when used responsibly and ethically. The unparalleled level of personalization it offers eclipses traditional outreach methods like phone calls or emails. While agents value building relationships with customers, there is no denying that face-to-face interactions, even through video, can enhance these connections like never before.
More Ways to Boost Agent Productivity
The key advancements we've covered today are only three of the latest uses of GenAI. Today, many companies are working to increase agent and broker accessibility to information to ease an agent's administrative burden and improve the consumer experience. From the ability to search benefits summaries to swiftly answer key policy questions to centralized FAQ databases that aid in addressing specific scenarios, there are many additional GenAI applications to streamline how agents operate.
With GenAI, Comes Great Responsibility
The insurance industry is highly regulated, and adopting GenAI should be approached with intention and responsibility. As concerns grow, emerging regulations and tools aim to enhance consumer protection and enterprise accountability in GenAI usage. However, until there is a universal governance policy, exercising extreme caution regarding security risks, quality and accuracy, and overall regulation and compliance is crucial.
Acknowledging these precautions, GenAI is ushering in a new era of efficiency for the insurance sector. Now is a pivotal moment for insurance companies to examine pain points across the buyer journey to see if implementing a GenAI solution can introduce a cost-effective solution that ultimately enhances the customer experience. In doing so, many companies will discover solutions that reshape the agent’s role and drive meaningful business value.
Melanie Russo is a Managing Director of Strategy Consulting at Marketbridge. Marketbridge provides growth consulting and marketing for modern leaders; helping Marketing and Sales leaders accelerate performance with no signal loss from strategy through execution. Contact us today.