machine learning

The Covid-19 pandemic spurred on a shift in digital innovation in the insurance industry. in a 2020 KMPG study85% of insurance CEOs said that Covid had accelerated the digitization of their operations, while 78% said it had turbo-charged progress on the creation of a seamless digital customer experience.

One significant area of ​​development within this has been automation, with machine learning helping insurance companies to streamline CX.

To learn more about the trends in this industry, I spoke with Christophe Bourguignat, the CEO and Founder of Zelros, an AI platform that helps insurers offer personalized product recommendations.

Zelros focuses on the distribution side of insurance, ie matching the policy holder with the right cover, depending on their specific lifestyle or needs.

“We do that by using data…” says Bourguignat. “We leverage the data that insurers already own, of course with the consent of the policy holders, and with the security that is required to manipulate that data. We also enrich this with external data – more and more governments are giving access to what they call open data, which is statistical information about weather or natural catastrophes.”

Transformation at incumbents accelerated during the pandemic

I asked Bourguignat how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted both Zelros, and the wider insurance industry.

“I see two effects,” he said. “First, people started realizing that society is more and more shocked by the crisis – economic crisis, climate crisis – and I think insurance will play a huge role in absorbing the shocks of those crises. People are now understanding why insurance in any domain is crucial for the stability of our planet tomorrow.”

“The second effect is of course the purchase habits of consumers – the fact that, during the pandemic, agencies were closed and face-to-face meetings were impossible. So