Where does AI help a finance or insurance business?
Written lesson · about 4 minutes to read
The short answer
AI helps a finance or insurance office with the reading: applications and claims read in and checked for completeness, each file summarised for the person who decides, and service questions answered from the record. Approval, pricing, claim decisions and advice to a client stay with a licensed person.
Three things to remember
- 01AI reads incoming documents, checks the file is complete and drafts the request for what is missing.
- 02Summaries must cite the source page for every fact, so the decider checks instead of re-reading.
- 03Approving, pricing, paying and advising stay with a licensed person, not with a tool's recommendation.
Documents in
A mortgage file, an insurance claim or a loan application can arrive as dozens of documents from several sources, half of them photographs of paper. The first day of a file is spent finding out what is in it. An AI can identify each document, sort it into the file, check it against the list of what a complete file needs, name what is missing and draft the request for it the same hour.
It can also copy names, dates, amounts and account numbers into the system, with the crop of the page beside each figure so a person can confirm them quickly. It cannot vouch that a document is genuine, so a person still verifies. Simple rules applied tirelessly catch the incomplete file on day one instead of day eight.
The file, summarised for the decider
The underwriter, the loan officer and the adjuster each read a file to find the few facts that decide it. The tool can put those on one page: what is being asked, the facts that bear on it, what is unusual and what is missing. Every fact is linked to the document and page it came from, so the person checks a citation instead of re-reading the file.
Tell the tool to say when a fact is not in the file rather than guess it, and have someone senior read a sample of summaries against their files each month. A summary that cannot be traced to its source is a liability. Long files are also where tools tend to skim the middle.
Service questions, answered
Most calls to a claims desk or lending office ask where something is: the status of a claim, application or payment, the documents still needed, the appointment booked. The answer is in the system, and the tool can read it and say it plainly at eight in the evening as readily as at ten in the morning. It is the safest place to start, because the answer is a fact the system already holds.
The tool says at the start that it is automated and what it can help with. When it hands over, it says so and says when a person will be in touch. A customer who knows they are talking to a tool forgives its limits, and one who finds out later does not.
The decisions that stay licensed
Whether to lend and at what rate, whether to pay a claim and how much, whether to insure and at what premium, and what a client should do with their money are licensed acts. A tool that says approve is a decision wearing a suggestion's clothes: after enough good recommendations, a busy person's review becomes a click. So ask the tool for the facts, cited, and let the person recommend.
Write those decisions into the tool's instructions as hand-off rules, and name the person who owns the line. Regulators and the carriers or funders you work with have views on where client data may go and which tools may touch it, so check your own position with a lawyer before you shortlist anything.
Where to start this week
Write the list of decisions that need a licensed person, and finish it before any tool is chosen. Then find the one pile of documents that costs the most reading time, or the status questions that fill your inbound calls, and note how long they take today.
Start with read-only access limited to what each task needs, and one small, reversible workflow. Read a sample of the tool's work each month, so that a person's name is on every decision and the tool's name is only on the summaries.
More in part 10
- 1Where does AI help a manufacturer's office?Written
- 2Where does AI help a distribution or logistics business?Written
- 3Where does AI help construction and the trades?Written
- 4Where does AI help an HVAC or plumbing company?Written
- 5Where does AI help a field service business?Written
- 6Where does AI help a professional services firm?Written
- 7Where does AI help a dental or medical office?Written
- 8Where does AI help a finance or insurance business?WrittenYou are here
- 9Where does AI help a real estate or property business?Written
- 10Where does AI help a retail or e-commerce business?Written
- 11Where does AI help a restaurant or hospitality business?Written
- 12Where AI meets the plant floor
- 13What is a cobot?
- 14AI quality inspection: what it can and can't catch
- 15What is predictive maintenance?
- 16What is a digital twin?
- 17What is MHS (and why robots are about to speak AI)?
Next step
Where does this fit your business?
Six quick questions about your business, then your AI plan: what to start with, what a person still checks, and the lessons that go with it. Or bring it straight to a free thirty-minute call.