What began as an assignment to the research and development team at American Family Insurance Co. now stands alone as an independent company and today announced its first major customer. Arturu, a Chicago-based insurtech startup launched by American Family three years ago, said in a press release that it has penned a deal with Hippo Insurance to provide "real-time" analytics on property characteristics. "Hippo's partnership with Arturo has allowed us to pre-fill very valuable property data and information directly into the customer's application including roof material, pool presence, and more," stated Michael Gulla, senior director of underwriting at Hippo. "These insights streamline the client's onboarding process, while helping us define a highly accurate initial rating and top-quality underwriting requirements." Hippo, based in Mountain View, California, began working with Arturo from its very start as an insurance provider, and even before Arturo became a company.

Until even 18 months ago, the proportion of customers that used digital channels to buy insurance from Max Life Insurance Co. Ltd was less than 5%. "That was around the time we started our digital journey with a serious intent," recalls Manik Nangia, director of marketing and chief digital officer of Max Life--a joint venture between Max Financial Services Ltd and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Ltd. Now the number of users who "come through the digital door" is 20-22%. Digital initiatives, according to Nangia, should either increase productivity, pare costs or reduce friction in processes. For instance, "three-fourths of our policies are issued within two days." The error rate is also much lower, as the agents now fill up the details in front of the customers.

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. is planning to slash nearly 30 percent of its payment assessment department's human staff after it introduces an artificial intelligence (AI) system in January 2017 to improve operating efficiency. While concrete examples of AI systems making human workers redundant are currently rare, observers have pointed out that such cases are likely to increase. The insurance firm will introduce an AI system based on IBM Japan Ltd.'s Watson, which according to IBM is a "cognitive technology that can think like a human," and "can analyze and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video." The Watson-based system will be tasked with reading medical certificates written by doctors and other documents to collect information necessary for making payouts, such as medical histories, length of hospital stays, and surgical procedure names. In addition to determining payment amounts, the system will also be able to check customers' cases against their insurance contracts to find any special coverage clauses -- a measure expected to prevent payment oversights.