Managing director of Close Brothers Premium Finance, Seán Kemple, outlines the history of the provider. We are now in the information age, where computers, data and AI are rapidly taking over from industrialisation as the driving force of progress. To illustrate the power of information in our lives, Google gets over 3.5bn searches each day. WhatsApp users exchange 65bn messages daily. These are staggering figures, and underline how change is seemingly slow, but once a tipping point is reached, it accelerates very quickly indeed.

MCE Insurance is set to move to full AI underwriting following the implementation of the ICE Policy software system. According to the broker, ICE Policy, part of the Acturis Group, gives it the ability to develop AI and auto-machine learning within the business. MCE said that the move marks the final step towards creating a fully automated model providing dynamic, precision pricing by bringing together all quote, policy and claims data. This data equates to 20m records each month.

Broker says smartphone app will help customers find "better options" for cover using AI. InsurTech start-up Brolly has launched gadget and motor insurance in its smartphone app. In addition, the broker said its switching feature, which analyses what a customer is buying and searches for a better option based on information shared about their lifestyle, is live for gadget insurance. CEO and co-founder Phoebe Hugh confirmed that this will be rolled out on other product lines, including motor, home and travel in the coming months. The start-up broker claimed that Brolly's is the first insurance app where it's possible to switch and purchase insurance directly in-app.

The legal and regulatory framework needs updating to meet the demands of autonomous vehicles, according to David Powell, head of non-marine underwriting at Lloyd's Market Association. At a lecture at Lloyd's of London on 11 January, Powell highlighted that significant changes to the insurance industry are imminent. "The government is keen to embrace incoming technology and it doesn't want anything, including insurance issues, to get in the way of this," Powell stated. This was made evident when the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond delivered his Budget statement in Parliament on 22 November last year. At the time Hammond said there were "good reasons to pursue this technology" and that the government would step up its support and investment.

In December, Bank of England governor Mark Carney warned that half of the UK's workforce could be replaced by robots or computers in the coming years. In the insurance industry, we've recently seen Aviva asking its staff if a robot could better perform their job in a bid to increase its competitiveness in our increasingly digital world. Specialist brokers and smaller MGAs often find themselves trapped in manual processes such as rekeying information into multiple systems or manually generating documents and reconciling payments. If your business is significantly more expensive to run than a similar competitor, there is no good outcome in the long run. At best the Christmas Party will always be a low budget event, in the worst-case scenario you could go out of business.