Dennie Van Den Biggelaar, econometrician and data scientist with 12 years of experience as an AI strategist, emphasizes that in the insurance sector there is an "evolution of specific AI," rather than a "revolution of generative AI. This (r)evolution is driven by a growing need to serve customers in a scalable and personalized way. Due to consolidations, portfolios are increasing in size with a growing shortage of advisors. Insurance companies are thus at the limits of their growth. "This problem can actually only be solved by smarter use of data and AI," said Van Den Biggelaar, who together with his associate Jack Vos founded the company Onesurance for this reason. Vos, who knows the insurance world well, explains that their AI modules are not intended to replace advisors and experts, but rather to support them in their work. "After all, in the world of insurance, mortgages and pensions, it's all about trust: it is and remains human work." 

With its modules, Onesurance consciously chooses to use specific AI to solve very specific problems for insurance companies. Based on historical data, reliable predictions are made for underwriting, probability of churn, customer lifetime value or effective customer management, for example, so that the right customer gets the right attention at the right time. "Our AI modules are 'by design' explainable, transparent and comply with the Ethical Data Frameworks of the Association of Insurers" notes Van den Biggelaar, who is responsible for the technical development of the AI modules. Vos adds: "These are typically qualities that are demanded in the insurance industry, but that generative AI cannot yet provide.

A technology becomes powerful only when it is embedded in the ethical and human context.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

The potential to do more with data and AI is significant. According to a CapGemini Research Institute survey of 204 insurers, "data masters" in the insurance industry achieve revenue per FTE that is 175% higher and are 63% more profitable. This fact obviously appeals to parties that are constantly making acquisitions in their ambition to grow scalably. 

At the same time, the dilemmas surrounding privacy, bias and liability are not diminished. If AI is deployed without context and without the so-called "human in the loop," unintentional errors can occur that lead to customer dissatisfaction, ethical issues and an undermining of trust in the insurance industry. "You cannot compromise ethically and morally when working with machine learning and AI," said Van den Biggelaar. "It is crucial that AI experts feel responsibility to steer this in the right direction. And we take our role in this very seriously." This is partly why Onesurance is working intensively with the company Brush-AI, the Netherlands' first company dedicated to systematically managing the ethical component in AI. 

That this responsibility is also taken seriously by the insurance industry is evidenced by, among other things, the KOAT advisory committee, which started already in 2019 under the leadership of SIVI. SIVI develops and manages standards for the benefit of digital business in the financial world. Jack Vos, who himself has a place on the committee: "KOAT stands for Quality Unmounted Advice and Transaction Applications. By 'unmediated applications,' we mean smart software capable of replacing tasks, not people. Increasing use of such automated applications in the financial sector, combined with new (European) regulations, make quality assurance of unframed applications increasingly important to safeguard the customer's interests." For example, the Financial Services Complaints Institute (Kifid) is seeing an increasing number of complaints about digital services. SIVI's platform offers insurers, underwriters and software companies, among other things, a checklist and a knowledge base. It is not inconceivable that the checklist is a good first step toward a quality standard. This is important for Dennie Van Den Biggelaar, Co-Founder Onesurance Jack Vos, Co-Founder Onesurance the consumer, but also for the financial advisor himself. After all, the financial service provider himself remains liable for the advice given, even if the unframed application was developed by an external software supplier.

Since September 2022, Onesurance has been part of the Cronos Group, the largest ICT service provider in Belgium, with 10,000 employees, 500 of whom work in the Netherlands. Partly because of this, Onesurance was able to scale up quickly because all complementary ICT experts are readily available within the units of Cronos. Founders Jack Vos and Dennie van den Biggelaar together gained years of experience in successfully developing and implementing data science solutions at Building Blocks, which is part of the publicly traded CM.com. In 2019, they thereby won the NVGA Innovation Award with the solution Data Driven Underwriting. Onesurance has offices in Amsterdam-IJburg, Breda and Kontich (Belgium).

More info? Please contact Jack Vos

Source: This article appeared in the Financieel Dagblad and was written by Fred Pals.

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