Future of insurance: AI vs the human touch

One theme that came through strongly was that despite all the excitement around AI, insurance will remain a people business.

Whilst the future of insurance inevitably has an increasing dependency on the evolution of technology, I think gentrification in terms of AI is going to deliver more efficiency for brokers and for insurers.

At the heart of it, it's still a people business.

The next 10 to 20 years are really going to be dominated by developing technologies, definitely AI and how we use that within the industry.

But I think the challenge for us as brokers and insurers is to make sure that we don't lose the human element from what we do in our daily interactions with our customers.

I think the future of insurance will still be centered around relationships.

So I believe there's going to be technological advances across AI, improving data, systems that will drive efficiencies across what we do.

But everything will be coming back to what's most important around relationships, especially in the commercial and corporate space.

I think that's so important, isn't it? Because we talk so much about AI.

As you said, there's so much excitement.

Where's this going to go that potentially the human element can feel a little bit lost? But how important do you think it's going to be, those relationships as the technology advances?

I think it's critical for competing, right? I mean, I think what we're likely to see is a lot of firms and businesses embedding AI, using it to kind of get those operational efficiencies right.

I think as we all in the industry know, insurance is kind of based on trust.

It's a promise, right? And I think how do you differentiate yourselves as a brand in what is a competitive market? Then I think it does come down to trust.

And I think that trust is built through human interactions.

And I was struck with one of the points which kind of came out from the Allianz trust barometer, which you had, which is actually there's a big... sort of perception gap between what people think of insurance in the abstract and then what they think about their insurer when they've made a claim.

And I think that is really primarily a result of that human interaction that lifts people's perceptions of the industry.

So it will remain important, but the context is going to be very different.

Colin, there is excitement, but of course there's anxiety, isn't there, around AI, that we might lose that sort of human touch.

How can we ensure that we don't? And in that, where do you see AI making the biggest difference? You spoke earlier about some of the areas that could have a big change, but where do you see it making the biggest change?

If I want to do something online, I want it to be fast, easy, and I can trust it that when it's done, it's done.

AI will help with that.

If I need advice, I want to speak to somebody who can help me understand because the answer is not black or white.

It's not black.

you know, one or two, there's variance within what I should do.