Ping An dives deeper into AI via “Smart Verification” and “Smart Fast Claim” products
Ping An notes that the “Smart Verification” technology could cover more than 90% of the insurance company’s customer service, leading to a qualitative leap in customer service efficiency.
The devotion of China’s Ping An to the development and adoption of new financial technology is undisputed, with another piece of proof in this respect just presented to us by Ping An Insurance (Grp) Co of China Ltd (SHA:601318).
The company has unveiled two new products to the insurance industry, with both of these products based on the latest artificial intelligence technology.
“Smart Verification”, released on “Ping An Smart Insurance Cloud”, uses AI technologies such as face recognition and voiceprint recognition to create a biological record of each customer, which performs a speedy verification with the physical person, his/her behaviors and attributes. This technology enables the insurance industry to shift to a physical person verification system, thus solving a number of traditional problems concerning safety and convenience.
By speedy verification of the behaviors and attributes of agents and insured persons though “Smart Verification”, the number of potential disputes arising from the policy selling process is expected to be substantially reduced. With Ping An’s “Smart Verification” put into use, the new policy surrender rate is estimated to fall to 1.4%, compared to an industry average of 4%. Time taken for a policy enrollment is reduced 30 times, time taken for audio and video recording falls 75%, whereas the quality control success rate rises by 65%.
In its announcement on the launch, Ping An notes that the “Smart Verification” technology could cover more than 90% of the insurance company’s customer service, as it leads to a qualitative leap in customer service efficiency.
Though the company does not mention any changes to staff numbers related to the adoption of this solution, the statement about the effectiveness of the customer service hints that an AI product like this can overtake successfully many of the customer service center roles. This takes us back to January this year, when Japan’s Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance announced its plans to lay off 34 employees due to the adoption of IBM’s Watson Explorer Artificial Intelligence system.
Moreover, Ping An notes that the applications of the “Smart insurance cloud” are not limited to the insurance sector. The smart verification technology can be applied to all scenarios involving physical person verifications, such as opening a bank or securities account.
“Smart Fast Claim” is also released on “Ping An Smart Insurance Cloud”. It is an artificial intelligence platform for loss assessment and risk management focused on the automobile insurance industry in China. The “Smart Fast Claim” has helped Ping An Property & Casualty handled over 4.99 million automobile claims in the first half of 2017, with a Net Promotor Score (NPS) of 82% and intercepted approximately RMB3 billion of leakage risks. When fully implemented in the industry, the platform is anticipated to markedly improve the overall claims efficiency and reduce the number of disputes and risk of leakage, bringing about over RMB20 billion revenue for risk leakage control and enhancing the claims efficiency by over 40%.
