AI, CX, and the Insurance Revolution: Insights from Industry Leaders with Anthony O’Donnell

Dora Clements: So much you'll hear folks talk about, “We used to have insurance companies that had technology. Now you have technology companies that have insurance.”

Mike Mead: This is the best time to be a technologist in the insurance space.

Jennifer King: We see technology as a way to enhance rather than replace the customer service skills.

Narrator: This episode of Life Accelerated is brought to you by Equisoft. A leading global provider of end-to-end cloud-based solutions with deep domain expertise in the life insurance industry. To learn more, visit Equisoft.com.

Anthony O'Donnell: I'm Anthony O'Donnell, and this is Life Accelerated, a podcast for life insurers striving to achieve digital transformation. In this special episode, we're looking at the conversations I had with industry leaders throughout 2024.

Anthony O'Donnell: Two undeniable truths have surfaced again and again. One, the accelerating pace of technology change continues to rapidly alter how we work. And two, those changes have significant potential for bottom line effects relating to customer experience and efficiency, provided carriers do a good job of applying and implementing them.

That said, even in the face of all these adjustments, Dora Clements, Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation at Unum, reminds us that some things should stay the same.

Dora Clements: We are transforming and we aren't transforming. And what I mean by that is what we aren't transforming is our mission and what we're setting out to do.

Dora Clements: We want to make our benefits accessible to anyone and everyone that needs them. We want to make it easy to administer, easy to access. And our mission is to make sure that employees are supported when they need it. So we're not transforming that. What we are transforming is how we meet that objective.

Dora Clements: And I think that's continuing to have amazing customer support and amazing people who are going to be there for our customers, but giving them the right tools and the best tools to be able to do that, and then also giving great digital tools and capabilities into the hands of our customers and our partners along the way.

Dora Clements: So much you'll hear folks talk about, "We used to have insurance companies that had technology. Now you have technology companies that have insurance." And we really want to be the best mix of both of those because we know that when we, whether we're talking to brokers or we're talking to plan administrators, or we're talking to claimants, they have expectations of how they interact in their day to day life in the digital world, whether it's going to Amazon or Googling something, whatever it is, they're simple experiences.

Dora Clements: They don't need their insurance to be the complicated experience, right? They need it to feel just as easy, just as integrated. And so that's really what we're focused on. And so it's doing what we've done for 175 years, but doing it in an even better, stronger, I think, easier way for our customers.

Anthony O'Donnell: Dora Clements not only gives us practical advice, but she reminds us that an insurance company's mission is perennial.

That all the technological refinements we continue to make are in service of the basic promise insurers have been making, in many cases, for well over a century. But what is new should be the cause for encouragement, according to Mike Mead, CIO of CNO Financial Group. Not only are insurance companies doing great things with technology for their policyholders, partners, and employees, but they're getting better at it

Mike Mead: This is the best time to be a technologist in the insurance space. Really glad to be part of it.

Mike Mead: When I think about challenges, there are many. A big area centers around consumer expectations. Interacting with any company, whether it's insurance or really any industry, consumers have an expectation of that digital experience, but not just our policyholders have expectations. Our employees have expectations.

Mike Mead: You know, if at home I can do this, why is it not easier at work? So I think those expectations lead to challenges as an IT organization and in this multi channel world where you want to interact in the way that works for you. I think it's easy to say in our business, "We're going to meet the customer when and how they want to be met."

Mike Mead: It's much harder than it sounds to deliver on that, and especially when dealing with a large footprint of legacy technology. So, I think that's one of the big challenges that I see. Opportunity is, I think, abound because, thankfully, with all the tools, all the capabilities coming out in technology, our ability to more rapidly advance, we're addressing that, we're getting better at it.

Mike Mead: But as an industry, I think that just continues to be an issue.

Anthony O'Donnell: In our next clip, Niki Manby, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Mutual of Omaha, hits upon the biggest topic of recent times - AI. She advises clarifying what AI is and is not good for when it comes to the life insurance industry.

Niki Manby: I do not see generative AI changing the insurance business model the way that generative AI is certainly changing the business model in so many other sectors. Searching today, using any web browser, is already a different experience as the likes of Google and others employ generative AI in their searching.

Niki Manby: That's a real change to the business model of that product, that solution. I don't see that kind of a change in a life insurance product or a health insurance product. So for me, generative AI and insurance is less about the what, but it is absolutely about the how, and I think that is where we will see pretty radical disruption.

Niki Manby: But I think you could expect to see that most of the early use cases will be internally facing, even though the promise of generative AI certainly is exciting when you think about it extending to customers and producers, but I don't think many in our space are there just yet.

Niki Manby: And we're all spending a lot of time thinking about governance and the appropriate controls when we have generative AI conversations with our customers.

Anthony O'Donnell: Jennifer King, Vice President of Customer Experience at Boston Mutual, stresses that customer facing capabilities are a tandem match of high tech and high touch.

Jennifer King: So my role is overseeing both elements of the implementation and leading the customer experience departments. And that has actually given me a tremendous amount of empathy for what our customers experience is as well as our employees. And this has been truly a game changer, I think, for me and for our organization.

Jennifer King: And I've learned, and I've seen firsthand that both technology and human touch are imperative to the success of our business. And one doesn't necessarily outweigh the other. The technology advancements, they're absolutely crucial to the success of our business. And especially in today's fast paced lifestyle where customers just frankly expect instant results.

Jennifer King: They want to be able to log in at 9 o'clock at night and process a change. But we are also really carefully considering what pieces of the process should be automated versus the pieces that still require a human touch. And we understand that our employees bring tremendous value. And we see technology as a way to enhance rather than replace the customer service skills.

Jennifer King: And with the benefits of the new system and the work we're doing now for our future state, our employees will be able to spend less time navigating tech and workarounds, and more time directly servicing our customers, or even innovating to find new and better ways. So it really comes down to people for us.

Anthony O'Donnell: Karen Leggett, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Manulife, offers advice on how to bring staff along as partners in transformation.

Anthony O'Donnell: She addresses the particular concern that AI threatens job security.

Karen Leggett: We wanted to make sure that our colleagues were not going to have something done to them. we wanted them to be equal participants in this new technology. Not fear it, but rather embrace it and be innovators in their own right,

Karen Leggett: whether that is in their own personal productivity within their roles or applying it to how they transform the businesses or functions that they support. Sometimes you hear people say, "Oh, well, AI is going to replace your job."

Karen Leggett: And I love the saying that says, "It's not AI that's going to replace your job. It's another employee who's very comfortable with AI that might replace your job." And so, the human in the loop will continue to be extremely important. And I think it just brings into play more of the intellect and the creativity, and the innovative thinking that the human brings to the table coupled with the transformative power of AI that we really believe makes the difference.

Anthony O'Donnell: As much as the pace of change has continued to accelerate in the life insurance industry, we think this season of the Life Accelerated podcast provides a good introduction to how many important trends will continue into 2025. Software is changing as more capabilities reach the cloud, easing upgrades and achieving the true kind of configurability that makes using it more of a business analysis problem.

Anthony O'Donnell: New data solutions proliferate for various parts of the insurance value chain involving advanced analytics, AI and machine learning. Changes in technology are driving changes in staffing at a time when it's become harder to secure. Guiding that staff through change will be increasingly important. Mike Mead of CNO pointed to the great upside in technology change of the insurance industry, implying that what we've seen demonstrated across the industry is that technology is a strategic lever that is making things better, faster, and cheaper, and that insurance technology organizations are getting better at deploying it.

How insurers should address the opportunities presented by technology will depend on their individual circumstances. However, as Dora Clements reminded us, the point of all the advancements in technology and skill in using it is ultimately about insurers' perennial mission policyholders and their families.

Thank you for joining us for the Life Accelerated podcast. For more content to help you achieve digital transformation, visit Equisoft.com/LifeAccelerated.