The balance between human and machine roles in insurance will reach 50/50 in coming years as AI capabilities are unlocked, according to Xceedance.

The insurance technology group’s chief digital officer Brandon Nuttall says while humans will dominate business functions, AI will be integrated into data and will exceed the capabilities of staff who only have insights on claims and underwriting cases they have personally experienced.

The drivers of most key business functions at Xceedance are AI agents, and Mr Nuttall recommends this to leaders in the insurance industry.

“Already, there are decisions in contact centres, claims functions, underwriting functions that are better made by a machine, by an algorithm, than by a human,” he said.  

Integrating AI will create systems capable of recreating good judgments made in the past and extrapolating them, applying them to future cases.

“If you have 30 years of data, putting more of that at the fingertips of the humans that are executing your process will make your process safer and more assured,” Mr Nuttall said.

“Essentially, humans will move from doing the work to quality-assuring the work, and then auditing the work.

“You’re using the bot as a next best action solver. Rather than passively waiting for the human to interact with it, the bot will proactively come with a recommendation or assertion, or a next best action.”

Humans will “move from being the prime mover of activity to being concentrated in defence activity”.

Mr Nuttall says AI will change how everyone in the industry operates, and “getting out in front by investing in helping people understand how their roles and skills will change and how they will need to evolve as technology evolves is absolutely key”.