Insurance is not just a product that consumers can buy and safeguard for the future; it is also a commitment that consumers expect the insurance company to fulfil when they face the most difficult times of their lives. Thus, the concept of claim settlement and fulfilment forms the most crucial aspect of any kind of insurance product.
Insurance so far has been majorly led by the traditional model, where claim settlement is a long and tedious process, both for consumers and insurance companies.
Due to the risk and fraud-related issues, making prompt decision without error is a massive challenge, leading to inordinate delays in settlement. As per recent reports, around 38% of health insurance companies settled claims on an average in 5 business days; there have been reports of further delays in settlements. Covid has been a huge testimony to the emergency health crisis in the country. And as per reports, Covid claims amounting to ₹117 crore have remained unsettled, for FY 21, ending March 2021.
For life insurance, there have been cases, where beneficiaries are not even aware that they are nominees of the policy. As much as ₹15,167 crore of policyholders lies unclaimed with 23 life insurers, according to 2018 data. In case of individual life insurance business, during the year 2020-21, the claims pending at the end of the year were 3,055 for ₹623 crore; whereas claims repudiated was 9,527 for an amount of ₹865 crore.
Claim settlement remains a key challenge for the category, which impacts the consumers and insurers parallelly. Digital, driven by technology-enabled data analysis solutions is the way forward for streamlining claim settlements in the country. Insurers can use artificial intelligence and big data analytics to create accurate individual risk profiles. All these make the underwriting process seamless, and, at the time of claim, the risk profiles can be verified quickly, which can reduce the turnaround time for claim processing to hours and even minutes.
Indraneel Chatterjee, co-founder, RenewBuy said, “We understand what challenges consumers face, especially after filing claims and we always wanted to upgrade the insurance value chain with the help of deep tech offerings. This is the reason, why RenewBuy recently acquired Artivatic.AI. Artivatic’s AI driven technology will solve a long-standing problem for the industry and for our consumers. We will be able to offer improved automated claims assessment, real-time QC and fraud and risk assessment, and almost instant claims settlement with minimal labour and errors. We would urge the entire industry to move to a tech-driven insurance model for solving the deep-rooted claim settlement issues in the country.”
Adding to this Layak Singh, CEO, Artivatic.AI said, “Artivatic.AI already has 400 plus APIs and many patents, which have been developed with different insurance companies. Insurers using Artivatic’s deep technology have witnessed, 90% reduction in turnaround time for policy issuance, 70% reduction in claim turnaround time; 15% reduction in AML, risk & fraud. Hence, deep technology can significantly help the industry meet the challenges with underwriting and claim settlements.”
Along with this, technology integrations can help with ease in operations, risk-based personalized automated solutions, risk and fraud intelligence, embedded distribution and sales intelligence, which are the need for the hour for increasing the insurance penetration in the country and for catering to changing consumer insurance needs. While RenewBuy-Artivatic is one such platform, which can help the industry and consumers solve claim related issues, the industry needs similar partnerships and joining of hands, to integrate technology and solve the long-standing issues related to insurance.
Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.