With the emergence of modern technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), many industries got disrupted. Exceptional transformations took place in the way industry processes were run, making them more streamlined, efficient, and cost-effective. As industries gradually started adopting these modern technologies, more accurate and precise outcomes resulted in organizations understanding their client’s needs better and delivering them more personalized solutions.

One name among the companies that are leveraging technology to provide customized solutions to their clients is Atidot. Spearheaded by Dror Katzav, the CEO and Co-founder of Atidot, the company is a leading AI cloud-based platform tailored specifically to suit the needs of the life insurance industry, enabling insurers to grow their customer’s Lifetime Value and create new revenues. In the following interview, Dror talks about the exemplary personalized solutions that the company has been delivering since its inception.

Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a leading player in the financial services space.

Atidot is an Insurtech company providing AI and ML solutions for life insurance companies. Atidot offers a cloud-based platform that provides data-driven insights to decision-makers, drives new business strategies, and creates new revenue streams using AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics technology resulting in optimization and monetization of insurers’ books of business. We are currently one of the few companies with a tailored solution designed by a team of actuaries and data scientists that match the life insurance industry’s needs.

Atidot works with leading life insurers, such as Guardian Life and Pacific Life, mainly in North America and Europe. Because of our unique positioning as an AI solution provider that works with carriers to disrupt their organization, Gartner named us ‘Cool Vendor 2019’, in insurance. The company also was selected as one of the ‘Top 10 Insurtech’ companies by CIO Magazine and is included in ‘Insurtech100’ most innovative Insurtech companies by FinTech Global.

What other services/solutions does your company offer, and how are these impacting the industry and your clients?

Because we view AI solutions as such that have a ripple effect throughout the value chain, we offer many AI-based solutions for life insurers. Today, we focus on providing insurers with insights and analytics about policyholders to help them understand their needs and unlock the potential these customers hold. In addition, we offer the ability to operationalize these insights with a complete marketing and operation package to drive new business.

In essence, we can manage the whole digital communication with an existing book of business and help customers make the transition from offline to online, generating upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

We also focus on solutions that enable accelerated and automated underwriting, detect inefficiencies in the underwriting process, produce insights on distribution channels and other solutions that will help an insurance company become more nimble, efficient, and most importantly, more profitable.

Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of the adoption of modern technologies such as AI, big data, and machine learning on the finance niche, and what more could be expected in the future?

Life insurance used to be simpler a decade ago. Insurance was bought, not sold, and insurers became very wealthy. But the world changed during the last few years, specifically post-COVID. Interest rates are lower and people expect a different level of service today, which they are struggling to get from their insurance provider. Companies don’t really know how to provide the expected level of service where everything is friendly, self-explanatory, and delivered at the speed of light.

AI and machine learning technologies are the power behind product and marketing strategies that can provide better life insurance to customers. These technologies can ensure that people are provided with the right product or service at the right time and the right price. Advanced technologies can ensure that more people can be eligible for life insurance, and those who get it are provided with much better service.

‘One size’ doesn’t really fit all in today’s world, and there are many variations and grey areas when insuring people. What if you could tailor a bespoke suit to people instead of providing one quote? What if they could be insured at the exact amount that fits their needs? Right now, there is a huge uninsured or underinsured population. If you could provide a more personalized solution to each of them, you could potentially serve better as a company.

If you think like Amazon, the policyholders can choose from a pool of products and services. They can pick and choose according to their needs and situation in life. It is a shift in paradigm in the way insurers view their customers. The customer is placed in the middle, and the data governs the interaction insurers have with them. That data is being managed and extracted with technologies such as AI and ML.

Taking into consideration the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face, and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?

Atidot, as a nimble start-up, maintained its ability to respond to the impact the pandemic had on insurance companies. For a while, we stopped recruiting and shifted into a hybrid model of work where we met at the office twice a week and worked from home the rest of the time. That helped our employees stay safe and cope with that difficult time where the whole family stayed at home, and the children had no school.

Luckily, the life insurance industry didn’t really suffer from the pandemic, and most insurers experienced a record year. In fact, COVID accelerated many of the processes that started before the pandemic, such as digitization and moving to a cloud infrastructure. So, once we realized that the market was opening up to us, we started growing significantly in terms of adding resources and expanding our product offering.

That said, during COVID, there were many things that insurers could do to help their customers, like providing cash value loans and other financial products that could provide relief. But it needed an immediate response from the insurers that usually rely on their channels and have a long response time due to culture and complicated internal processes.

What if you could send the right offer to the right customer with a personalized message that will give them the kind of financial security they were looking for with just the push of a button? That would surely do wonders, not just in terms of loyalty to the company but also in terms of creating new revenue streams that would benefit the top line of companies. This is where Atidot fits in, and insurers understand that.

How do you envision scaling your company’s operations and offerings in 2021?

Right now, we see a huge interest in the market for our end-to-end packaged solution that provides analytics and operations combined. Insurers provide us with access to their data (anonymized), and we tailor the right product and marketing strategy that translates into new revenues.

This is often provided in a rev share model where we contribute our resources and infrastructure, and the carrier provides access to the data. It’s a win-win strategic model where all parties benefit from growing their business with minimal risk.

Exhibiting Brilliance

• “Given the current state and rapidly shifting buying trends, we were seeking a predictive analytics solution to help us drive future product performance in the marketplace with a high level of confidence,” comments Mary Bahna-Nolan, SVP, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy Life Insurance Division, Pacific Life.
• “The iPipeline/Atidot, predictive analytics models, cover multiple dimensions of our business, and we expect this to provide valuable guidance immediately after implementation. We are excited about enriching our analytics with new, actionable insights to guide our decisions, minimize risk, and optimize efforts to grow our business while better serving the needs of our customers.” (Insurance Innovation Report, June 2020) Mary Bahna – Nolan, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy, Life Insurance Division, Pacific Life

About the Leader

Dror Katzav is Atidot CEO and Co-Founder. Prior to co-founding, Atidot Dror completed an 11-year career as a team leader and project manager with an elite IDF (Israeli Defense Force) Unit, leading state-of-the-art technology development in intelligence. Dror led teams in artificial intelligence (AI), data solutions, and information sciences in that unit. He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mathematics and a Master of Science degree in management sciences and information technology.

When Dror finished his army service, he partnered with Barak Bercowitz, an army veteran and computer science wizard. Together, they realized that the life insurance industry could benefit immensely from data-driven solutions that would accelerate their transition into the new digital era. The life insurance industry was not speaking the language of data the same way other industries were at the time. They both saw it as their life mission to transform the industry to become data-driven focused and help insurers understand the policyholder’s needs.