Just as the rest of the insurance industry needs a technology overhaul, commercial property insurance is long overdue a refurbishment. And it's going to take more than a lick of paint to set this house in order, say the authors of this report. Loss costs and expenses are too high. Between 2016 and 2019, Lloyd's commercial property insurance showed losses of £2.6 billion. This figure is only going to increase as both man made and natural hazards cause losses.

In Korea, Kyobo Life has announced the launch of its new AI-based underwriting platform called Best Analysis and Rapid Outcome (BARO). The platform employs machine learning technology with the ability to process large amounts of natural language data. Kyobo life's AI-based underwriting platform employs machine learning technology and has the ability to process large amounts of natural language data The platform provides real-time services to sales staff and customers. The platform leverages Kyobo Life's underwriting manual to facilitate online deliveries by enabling instant communication with its sales staff. BARO's intelligence allows for easy approval or denial of insurance contracts with the help of screening criteria for pre-existing conditions and medical history.

A couple of months ago I was at a London insurance market meeting. It was mostly attended by brokers and underwriters and the subject was the London TOM. During a roundtable discussion I mentioned an article I'd just written about big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. I said as much as 80% of insurance underwriting will be automated before long. Sitting opposite me was a London market broker.

The company, which offers small business customers policies online, is becoming a licensed carrier in order to provide a greater range of innovative offerings. Before this move, Next acted as a managing general agent, selling its own insurance products but partnering with insurance carriers who underwrote those policies. The shift from an agency to a licensed carrier is intended to give the insurer more control over its underwriting and pricing, allowing it to launch new products more quickly and provide more tailored offerings. Also, as a carrier, Next will now write policies independently and can apply technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve its underwriting process. Alon Huri, Next's co-founder and CTO, says that becoming a carrier will give the company the speed and flexibility it needs to deliver the digital insurance experience today's small businesses say they want.

Behavioural change is a very tricky thing. We humans are so fickle. We see a bright shiny wearable device that can track our every move and we think it's our "silver bullet", a "ticket" to achieving our health and fitness dreams. Only for guilt to set in, as after a short time, the wearable device winds up in our top drawer. We knew the fitness data was great, but we really didn't know what to do with it. The truth is, behaviour change requires much more than data. Many programs have realized the magnitude of the problem and created incentive programs to reward people for being active, so they get a small pay-off on the road to achieving fitness. But in spite of these rewards, the drop-out rate remains problematic.

A couple of months ago I was at a London insurance market meeting. It was mostly attended by brokers and underwriters and the subject was the London TOM. During a roundtable discussion I mentioned an article I'd just written about big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. I said as much as 80% of insurance underwriting will be automated before long. Sitting opposite me was a London market broker. "Nothing writes business faster than a Mont Blanc pen!" Now, I'm not trying to make fun at his expense. How could he know any different, he wasn't a subscriber to The Digital Insurer at the time (although he is now!). In the specialist insurance market of London, this mind set may have held the market in good stead since the days of the quill pen.