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

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

Description: Align carrier, agent, and consumer definition(s) of DTC to establish a collective understanding for the affected parties. Understand why a direct-to-consumer approach may be important for carriers’ and distributors’ growth and development goals, tactics and strategies. Use the agreed-upon baseline and understanding of DTC’s importance to establish and agree upon reasonable expectations for its role in marketing, distribution, and product development and performance. Position carriers and distributors together to align sales, marketing and performance expectations and incentives for all parties to increase the possibility of outperforming in (and outside of) the DTC space; design sales, marketing and distribution systems and approaches to meet consumers where they are at; and expand current sales and cultivate new markets to remain relevant and magnify profiles in an ever-changing industry.

Description: The collective investment in transforming the life insurance proposition exceeds anything seen in the last thirty years — a working lifetime. As one would expect, reinsurers are playing a major role. The past five years have seen global reinsurers raise the bar on client experience to new levels, while also investing, expanding and re-organizing to support the transformation of the primary insurance industry, and in so doing also their own.

Description: After International Accounting Standards Board (“IASB”) issued International Financial Reporting Standard No. 17 – Insurance Contracts (“IFRS 17”), IASB received much feedback and suggestions for improvement. As a result, in early 2019, IASB made limited changes to IFRS 17. The presentation will briefly discuss the main contents and effects of those changes.

Description: In the world of digital excitement, Blockchain is the newest kid on the technology block. Pull up any search engine, punch in “Blockchain” and find yourself inundated with articles praising improvements over current centralized network systems that many insurers use. But is this praise warranted, and does Blockchain truly cure all ails? In this article, we pose commonly asked questions as well as provide answers from the perspective of an insurance company.

Description: The Future of Insurance is described, as seen by some heads of start-up FinTech companies.