Insurance companies start using ChatGPT for underwriting

On March 24, 2023, it became known that the Swiss insurance company Zurich began using the ChatGPT chatbot based on artificial intelligence technologies to increase the efficiency of a number of its processes and speed up certain operations.

The initiative, according to the Financial Times, was told by Ericson Chiang, director of information technology and digital products at Zurich. According to him, we are not talking about replacing the company's specialists with a chat bot. Instead, the neural network will assist in the performance of routine and expensive tasks in terms of man-hours: this can be, for example, extracting information from large documents and writing program code for statistical models.

The neural network will assist Zurich Insurance employees in performing routine and costly tasks in terms of man-hours

We are not going to replace the developers, it is [ChatGPT] as a co-pilot on the plane. Similarly, in the case of underwriting or analyzing claims, a chatbot will not replace people, but will make their work much more effective, Chiang said.

Zurich is exploring the possibility of using ChatGPT to search for information in files related to insurance claims. In particular, several years of data can be analyzed to determine the specific cause of losses for an entire category of claims. In addition, Zurich has implemented a new patent program to protect its intellectual property: it includes means for automated risk verification and artificial intelligence-based systems for document processing.

However, as noted in the publication of the Financial Times, the use of AI technologies by insurers caused concern among a number of public groups and regulators. Experts fear that the introduction of such systems will pose a threat to citizens' privacy and could lead to biased decisions.^[1]

Notes