New York, NY (PRNewswire)

InsurTech NY, the largest InsurTech community in North America, announced today its third growth-stage InsurTech accelerator cohort.

InsurTech NY’s carrier and broker members selected 32 startups, from a pool of more than 150 applicants in 29 countries, to participate in the hybrid insurance accelerator program. The accelerator starts in October and provides resources to help startups with traction, talent, and financing. Founders will work with insurers seeking to invest in startups, pilot new technologies, and provide risk capacity.

“We are proud to welcome our third cohort into the program to accelerate their growth,” said David Gritz, Managing Director of InsurTech NY. “They are fortunate to be supported by a best-in-class alumni base of 48 startups. The alumni companies already recognize five exits and more than $373 million in up-round funding in less than two years.”

Selected startups include:

Life, Health, and Benefits Lines: Atidot, Benekiva, BetterTradeOff, Cake, Canary Benefits, CoverGo, ForMotiv, FreeWill, GoGo Technologies, InvestSuite, Legacy Life, Monark HQ, PilotBird, Plum Life, Sunny Day Fund, and White Swan

During the program, founders will work with 70+ mentors from carriers, brokers, and solution providers to identify opportunities, establish partnerships, and overcome challenges in their business. The accelerator will continue until its culmination at an in-person Demo Day in NYC on November 15.

About InsurTech NY

InsurTech NY is an international gateway to bring together the insurance innovation community. It brings together carriers, brokers, investors, and InsurTech startups via educational and networking events, a competition, and an accelerator. InsurTech NY’s mission is to accelerate corporate innovation, drive talent to insurance, support innovation-friendly regulation, and improve access to investment. See more at insurtechny.com or meet its cohort companies at the Spring InsurTech Conference.

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Atidot has been selected into the 2022 InsurTech NY’s Growth-Stage Accelerator program.

Atidot: “We look forward to meeting and learning from incredible mentors in the insurance industry”.

Atidot is a cloud-based AI and predictive analytics solutions provider for life insurance companies. Our data-driven turnkey solutions directly impact companies across the value chain, help them serve their customers better, and generate new revenue streams. Founded by a team of data scientists and actuaries, Atidot works with leading carriers in North America and Europe to optimize their book of business. Atidot has offices in California, the UK, and Israel and was awarded by Gartner to be ‘Cool Vendor 2019’ in Insurance.

Written by Mercedes Concepcion-Gra, head of growth and innovation for NTT DATA‘s Global Insurance Digital Platform (GIDP) in the Life and Annuity Industry.

Six out of seven top companies worldwide use a digital ecosystem to offer a network of connected products and partner capabilities. And insurance companies are on the heels of tech giants, such as Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. Forty-two percent of insurers have already created partial or complete digital business platforms, and 56% are planning and building these capabilities. They are ramping up partnerships and adopting business processing as a service (BPaaS), third-party administration (TPA) services, and innovative technologies to launch their cloud-based digital platforms and partner ecosystems.

However, insurers face challenges migrating from monolithic legacy systems to modern digital platforms, such as choosing the right partnerships, onboarding digital tools, and justifying the return-on-investment (ROI) to key decision-makers. Despite the challenges, a well-executed digital ecosystem outweighs the growing pains; the right partnerships and platforms enable carriers to launch new products quickly, leverage data, reduce operational costs, mitigate risk, and deliver superior customer experiences.

We believe insurers must consider four primary areas as they debate entering the digital ecosystem arena.

1. Digital ecosystems increase agility and business resilience

The waves of the COVID-19 pandemic taught companies the importance of business resilience. Business resilience refers to an organization’s ability to absorb and effectively respond to sudden change. Insurance companies must be more agile in a time of digital acceleration, uncertain geopolitical pressures, and evolving customer demands. Insurers that adopt a digital ecosystem can better adapt to change by automating processes, from daily workflows to customer service features.

In 2021, insurance executives recognized environmental issues as a top priority after witnessing the side effects of global warming and discovering that environmentally friendly products appeal to consumers. Digitization allows an enterprise to prepare for emerging environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) expectations. ESG and business resilience go hand in hand; companies that keep up with ESG demands are more resilient in the face of economic change and global issues.

For example, Allianz promotes its Sustainable Solutions portfolio of insurance, asset management and assistance services that offer electric vehicle insurance, water pollution liability and incentive packages for owners of green homes to “ … improve people’s lives, make a positive environmental impact or address climate-related concerns.” With the right digital ecosystem, insurers can prepare for the future, monitor ESG-compliance and design product offerings for environmentally conscious policyholders.

2. Digital ecosystems improve employee productivity and satisfaction

Employees can be resistant to change and hesitant to embrace new ways of working. However, a digital ecosystem appeals to insurance teams because of its ability to offload manual tasks, increase productivity, and encourage collaboration. A digital ecosystem gives insurers and their selling agents access to an intelligent agent desktop that can externalize and automate repetitive, manual processes, a feature that frees up time for teams. This benefit reduces brain drain, but it also increases productivity and frees up employees to work on more complex tasks.

According to Automation Can Change the Insurance Industry, “Manual labor can be responsible for many of the mistakes and confusion in this industry, which handles such sensitive customer data. Automation comes to the insurance companies as a lifesaver — an injection of speed and efficiency to modernize workflows, boost productivity and completely revolutionize the user experience.”

For example, suppose an insurer’s robust ecosystem includes an AI software solution with intelligent chatbot technology. This AI-enabled customer service feature allows policyholders to resolve queries quickly and intuitively before escalating to a call center agent. This way, agents can focus on more skilled work while continuing to monitor the customer journey without following a paper trail or recovering a phone conversation.

3. Interconnected ecosystems elevate customer and digital experiences

Digital ecosystems allow insurers to expand their capabilities and do more for their customers. With diversified partnerships, insurers have access to more data reserves and real-time transactions, allowing them to improve capabilities and better service clients. For example, the NTT DATA GIDP platform leveraged its partnerships with best-of-breed solution providers, such as Verisk’s FAST, Salesforce, and SmartComm, to enhance the customer experience of insurers such as F&G.

F&G increased efficiency, rapidly developed new products, converted existing business blocks, and digitized the customer experience through its digital TPA and BPaaS offering. On the back end, an ecosystem connects each touchpoint on the value chain to give customers a wide selection of products and services to have a seamless, hyper-personalized experience on the front end. As a result, costs go down, customer loyalty goes up, and insurers gather more data to fashion more-precise product recommendations.

4. Ecosystems break down data silos and enhance transparency

Interconnected data is the crown jewel of the ecosystem. Insurers using an ecosystem have access to a vast database and AI technology capable of sifting through mass data resources to identify patterns and insights. However, before insurers can truly become a data-driven enterprise, they must eliminate barriers that silo data. An interconnected ecosystem makes this possible by amalgamating data sources into one robust data view.

In one example, insurers use Atidot, a platform that better predicts policyholders’ behavior and increases premium persistency. Atidot is an AI and machine learning insurance tool that consolidates internal and external data to produce dashboards, automated rules engines, and inputs for service differentiation. This data-driven technology offers numerous benefits for TPA and non-TPA clients, such as optimizing acquisition analytics, automating fraud analysis, and determining channel profitability and upsell opportunities. As a result, clients can now turn unstructured or meaningless data into valuable business intelligence to improve their overall strategy, customer experiences, and bottom line.

The evolution of insurance is happening, regardless of your preparedness. A digital ecosystem proves to be insurers’ most significant asset in the face of digital acceleration. Insurers with the right partnerships and ecosystem can respond to ESG demands, attract and retain skilled teams, exceed customer expectations, and monetize data to make smarter business decisions. Build a unique digital ecosystem that works for you and your consumers and step into interconnected insurance.

ISG recognizes NTT DATA as a strong leader in Life & Retirement TPA Insurance Services

NTT DATA helps insurers implement a digital platform that leverages various best-of-breed capabilities, including proprietary administrator platforms and cloud-based capabilities, to reap the many advantages of an interconnected ecosystem. ISG named us a leader in its new Life & Retirement TPA Insurance Services report for the U.S. The broad assessment of BPaaS/TPA providers recognized us for stellar support offered across insurance types, including life, annuity, and supplemental. ISG based ratings on these criteria:

• Ability to provide TPA services for life, annuity, and supplemental products that cover a variety of services
• Ability to manage end-to-end processes, demonstrating strong domain expertise
• Technology enablement expertise through a processing platform and digital technologies like automation, cloud, and other applications
• Offers clients industry solutions and builds partnerships
• Follows a strong consulting practice

Download the full report to view insurance providers’ strengths, challenges, and competitive differentiators.

Written by
Dustin Yoder, CEO Sureify
Dror Katzav, CEO, Atidot
Brent Williams, CEO Benekiva
Andrei Pop, CEO, Human API

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned up the heat on insurers. Now, more than ever before, they need to provide their business units with digital tools to conduct business, keep agents selling and enable connections to customers in a socially-distanced world. The new business and social climate mandates that customers be able to shop for, buy and manage a policy without a face-to-face interaction for the future. Those carriers that have put the technology and processes in place to meet this increased business and customer expectation will have continued success even while the model of what “work” and “financial security” look like is changing. Those who haven’t yet modernized are under added pressure to up their digital game.

Looking at a cross section of insurtech software and data leaders can provide carriers with a great deal of wisdom on how digital enablement is creating a more robust, more accurate, more cost-effective life insurance model for those willing to mix old and new. The leaders cited here demonstrate how implementing across-the-board technology enhancements can ultimately produce the recipe for success, not just today, but for the long term.

Sureify®

A recent Celent study shows that, in 2019, many of the most basic customer interactions related to the sale and service of life insurance could not be met digitally. More than 50% of insurers were unable to satisfy even basic customer needs (like changing a name, email address or beneficiary) without a face-to-face or fax transaction. It took a global pandemic to wake the industry up given that many needed processes have been stopped in their tracks. Today, many carriers who believed time was on their side are scrambling to adapt to this new environment, which arrived overnight and shows no signs of abatement. Frenetic activity is now being undertaken to plug a gap that was apparent even before the virus hit. A permanent digital end-to-end solution is no longer a nicety – it is a necessity.

Sureify began offering the “innovative” end-to-end digital experience that is now an absolute requirement for the life insurance industry long before the virus changed the transactional environment. The company’s platform is built to be flexible and modular.

• LifetimeAcquire enables omnichannel sales that drive placement rates via quoting, e-application, automated underwriting, and new business transmission.
• LifetimeService allows insurers to offer their in-force customers comprehensive self-service portals and native applications.
• LifetimeEngage uses a variety of channels, including web and mobile applications, to keep customers learning, growing and engaged as policyholders.

As different insurtech partners are brought in to fill specific roles for different clients, Sureify completely customizes offerings to fit individual carriers’ needs, even in a constantly-shifting business landscape. With a full complement of like-minded groundbreakers, Sureify orchestrates better, more cost-effective products and processes. The company’s continued growth is further proof that digital transformation is no longer an option, but a necessity. “The idea that digital transformation is innovative has changed overnight, and now many of these digital capabilities are the new normal for doing business post-COVID” noted Sureify CEO, Dustin Yoder. “Life insurers who make digital transformation part of their core strategy in 2020 will be well-positioned, not just throughout this pandemic, but into the future.”

Human API

Traditional methods of gathering needed information for underwriting such as in-person paramedical exams and attending physician statement requests are significantly delayed or paused for the moment as the medical field turns its attention to the coronavirus outbreak. As a result, carriers and reinsurers must find a digital method for collecting medical data to continue underwriting cases. Distribution firms are also on the lookout for new ways to assist clients remotely, and to streamline the insurance buying experience to help more consumers secure peace of mind.

Human API allows consumers to digitally connect and share health data from the comfort of their homes — with no IT integration work to get up and running. This “no-touch” approach to medical data retrieval supports business continuity for carriers, reinsurers, and distribution firms while ushering in a new era of digital transformation in insurance. Carriers and reinsurers are finding that an applicant’s electronic medical records often contain valuable information such as recent lab tests, vitals, and social history that can be used to expedite underwriting. The use of EHR data has grown exponentially, especially in recent weeks, and it shows the potential to replace the APS, in-person exams and lab work. This could pave the road to a future with automated rules engines, accelerated underwriting programs, and granular risk stratification. Stakeholders from all across the life insurance industry are fully embracing EHR data to adapt to our new normal and better serve consumers.

Atidot

Life insurers and annuity writers have more client data than any other industry yet analyzing policyholder behavior has always posed a challenge. The recent rise in unemployment rates, regulatory changes and the unprecedented market volatility have exacerbated that challenge. Over the course of the past six months, we have been confronted with regulatory changes, the COVID-19 pandemic, shelter-in-place orders, a mandatory 90-day premium grace period, interest-rate drops, and a two-billion-dollar relief package. Traditional capabilities and paradigms lack the flexibility to enable insurers to overcome uncertainty, limiting their ability to understand demand elasticity and analyze new market trends in real-time.

Choosing a digital, data-driven approach will empower life insurers to embrace new opportunities and overcome unforeseen risks. Life insurers need the ability to analyze parameters such as lapse, mortality, profitability (and many more) to generate accurate real time predictions that will support their strategy. The fastest, most efficient, and most accurate method to generate insights and predictions dictates the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies. AI and ML can process large amounts of data from multiple internal and external data sources and then learn and produce new insights as events occur. Atidot offers such real-time data analysis based on clients’ portfolios. The solution provides a 360-degree view of policyholders and producers using insights and recommendations. It also allows strategic scenario modeling on individual policyholders, or on insurers’ overall portfolio and prediction of trends, looking at both individual consumer policyholder behavior and market changes in real time. This allows carriers to monitor, analyze and strategize to improve profitability immediately. “The pandemic has accelerated the digitization process within life carriers however, they have yet to maximize the potential within their data” says Dror Katzav, Atidot CEO.

Benekiva

In today’s more hectic than usual environment, brought on by COVID-19, companies are challenged to keep business continuity effortless. Carriers need to easily move their claims operations to employees working from home, with no drop in productivity or issues with claims processing. Even the best life insurance modernized by technology combined with data means nothing if it does not produce the fulfillment of a customer claim.

Benekiva’s Bene-Claims module has allowed forward-thinking clients to transform their claims processes from intake through payout. The platform automates documentation, intake process, correspondence, workflows, rules, reporting, interest calculations and more. The company’s flexible architecture allows the platform to connect with multiple carriers’ systems across an organization to offer a single claims platform regardless of product line, product riders/rules, or underlying company that the policy was written under. Carriers using Benekiva’s claims module experienced business as usual, or even better than usual. Per Steve Shaffer, Chairman, President, and CEO of Homesteaders Life Company, “With Benekiva’s ability to work anywhere, anytime, and from any device, during COVID-19, it has been business as usual for our claims staff and most importantly, we have been able to uphold our superior servicing standard to our beneficiaries.”

Insurers working with Benekiva have reported the following benefits:

• 40% operational efficiency in claims processing, workflows, and payout
• Accurate rider and benefit calculations that saved a carrier $2 to $4 million a year
• Optimized interest calculations which saved a carrier over 40 hours a week
• Reduction of cycle time of 75%

As the industry goes forward, the increased sense of urgency that has resulted from COVID-19 is unlikely to diminish. That means that digital transformation will be essential to any carrier hoping to be viable in this new domain. As the method of doing business transforms to an “all digital” experience, it should be a given that 100% of insurers will be able to complete virtually all business transactions through mobile and web-based applications. Those insurers, and their start-up partners, who come to the table early will be best situated to sell more, manage risk better and operate in a cost-effective manner well into the future. Those who are in the beginning stages of offering such an experience may still be able to make up ground as they accelerate their processes to fit into today’s exclusively-remote business world. Those who haven’t yet started a digital transformation will need the best allies in insurtech to survive into the future.

Source: InsurTech News

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.