Description: This is a summary of the benefits of attending the 2019 Predictive Analytics Symposium.

Description: This second session in the series examines responses to the changing workplace landscape from outside the insurance industry. Using a question-and-answer approach with our panelists, this session focuses on practical approaches to identifying new opportunities, and ways in which traditional products and sales channels are changing to meet emerging needs. Compared with other vertical financial services, the life insurance industry has a very low level of 'touch' with its customers. Communication with customers is often limited to the annual mailing of premium invoices. Wellness platforms offer life insurers a means to increase customer engagement, building stronger brand affinity and improving persistency. Life insurers can also leverage customer data collected through the wellness platform to streamline the underwriting process for cross-sales, increasing volume and efficiency.

Description: Healthcare cost is increasing at 9.3% in Asia in 2017 and health insurance cost will eventually catch up, making healthcare unaffordable to aging populations. Inefficiency in healthcare system is a contributing factor. In this session, use cases on how AI is impacting the health insurance operations on 3 core challenges. Document processing: A lot of documents are generated in the healthcare ecosystem, medical reports, diagnosis, invoices etc. Currently most of the documents are still reviewed manually and rely heavily on users’ judgement. Customer engagement: Customers are generally under distress and feel rejected during the claim process. It is due to the time and process needed to get the information they look for, the gap between the sales and claims process, and the reimbursement amount. Claim settlements: Claim adjudication is a technical process that review the disease, treatment and policy coverage. The process is specific to disease and difficult to be generalized. Thus, the process is far from consistent and invites fraud, abuse and wastage in this area.

Description: This report is intended to serve as a guide to the InsurTech landscape for the actuarial community and insurance practitioners. InsurTech is the use of emerging hardware, software and user interfaces to address inefficiencies or opportunities in the insurance value chain. It often involves technology, data and analytics.

Description: With the rapid development of the Insurance market, insurance technology—including online insurance--continues to mature. Zhongan Online invests heavily in fintechand Zhongan Answer, an insurance robo-advisor, launched in 2018, could improve transaction efficiency by using artificial intelligence to communicate in a timely manner and solve the pain point of the perplexed insurance clause. Under a different consumption scenario, Zhongan Answer could reply to users in a timely manner, while also implementing private customized products and services by providing users with personal risk management and insurance assessment solutions so that users could easily and conveniently select the most suitable insurance plan. The intelligent shopping guide system of Zhongan Answer could improve transaction efficiency by analyzing the personal insurance intention and providing the humanized interpretation of insurance clause. Zhongan Answer has served millions of users and supported more than 100,000 insurance-related knowledge points with an accuracy rate over 90%. Zhongan Answer has provided more than four million Q&A services, and its intelligent shopping guide system covers more than 90% of insurance products.

Description: Innovation has become a buzz word for insurers in recent years, with boards demanding more innovation and a trend to establish innovation teams and chief innovation officers.

Description: A contract owner selects a payout for his annuity using an AI/bot. The AI/bot presents various options with differences in payment and interacts with him in a simulated chat session. He decides on the form of payout. Compared to regular customer service the AI/bot was an improved experience with a call to action for the industry to build it.

Description: As an undergrad student, I discussed about my understanding of how AI is going to influence insurance industry through my volunteer experience with the SOA Actuarial Innovation and Technology Repository.

Description: Letter from the editor, outlining the theme and providing a brief description of each article within this edition of NewsDirect.

Description: The journey for microinsurance, nowadays called inclusive insurance, started a long time ago and is not complete in the majority of the low-income and low middle-income markets. When seeking to enhance inclusive insurance markets, it is useful and necessary to have a good understanding because it entails a different treatment of customers, distribution, products, pricing, client management, premium collection, claims declaration and settlement, and reporting.