Intellect Seec: Blazing the Big Data Trail in Insurance
Pranav Pasricha, CEO
Intellect SEEC is a global insurtech company with a simple motto—to make insurance about the insured. Today, the state of the insurance industry is one where paperwork perpetuates legacy data, technology has a choke hold on processes and the focus has shifted away from the end customer. Intellect SEEC aims to set this right by applying advanced technologies such as data, machine learning and cloud to improve customer experience and lower the cost of insurance.
The company, which counts Life Insurance Corporation of India(LIC)among its customers, holds a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for life and commercial insurance. These solutions surround the core system,starting from quote, policy issuance, all the way to post issue servicing and maintenance. This portfolio of solutions also includes a value-rich, AI-driven under writing workstation.
In a bold move, Intellect SEEC reinvented itself in 2014 on the back of modern technology-cloud, unstructured data and AI. At the time, these technologies were branded as catchwords in the fintech industry and their potential had not been fully understood.
The company has since then developed a machine learning and big data based risk assessment platform that gives insurance underwriters an all-round understanding of a risk. The tool covers facts relevant to a case, its past history and also leading indicators of what can go wrong in the future.
Speaking to CIOReview magazine, Pranav Pasricha, CEO of Intellect SEEC said, “In the market where we operate, particularly over the last four years, enterprise technology has changed more than it has in a couple of decades. You will see that a lot of people are saying that machine learning and AI in enterprise technology combined with cloud-native computing is going to be bigger than the impact of the internet. I truly believe in
that dynamic.”
Data is the new oil of the economy, and true to this maxim, Intellect SEEC is honing its risk assessment platform across all four Vs of big data-variety, volume, velocity and veracity. On account of ‘variety’, the platform has the largest repository of unstructured data sources that includes IoT, streaming devices and social media. Underpinning variety is volume- more than 1800 data sources feed into the platform, on top of which carriers can build varied analytical models based on their business strategy. The company believes that being able to source massive amounts of data is key to working with non-traditional sources of data.
Intellect SEEC addresses velocity, the third factor, by tapping into real-time information about any entity during the time of under writing or at the time of customer engagement. This enables the underwriter to ask fewer questions, and yet understand the risk better.
Of course, all of this would be a lost cause if veracity of big data is not ascertained. Using proprietary entity matching and triangulation models, the company has been able to ensure the trustworthiness of data.Sufficient measures are taken to ensure the data aggregated by the platform comes with consent from the respective data sources.
"Coupled With Our Deep Domain Knowledge, 30-Year Presence In The Market And Experience In Working Around The World Gives Us An Edge In Conceptualizing How New Business Models Can Be Created. We Really Make Sure That Either Innovation Or Disruption Happens For Our Customers"
One of the first things where Intellect SEEC applied its platform was to check the quality of the traditional information used to underwrite everyday. It conducted an analysis on the incoming quote submissions to seven major U.S. based commercial carriers between January 2017 and January 2018. The results were stunning. While it’s common knowledge in the insurance industry that clients and/or brokers, on occasion, depict risks in a better light to obtain better rates or to get subpar risks through underwriting, the degree of this mis information and its impact on pricing and loss ratio has been statistically proven for the first time through the use of Intellect’s Big Data and AI toolkit.
The company found that 25-30% of submissions had errors in the key rating and underwriting fields, such as employee count,revenue,business operations, location footprint and disclosures about operational practices, past trading and safety history. The error rate was consistent across carrier, line of business and business type. While the general outcome of the study such as the fact that a lot of false information is provided to under writers may not surprise industry insiders. The extent of the false data and its loss ratio impact is quite alarming.
Further,using the risk assessment algorithm, Intellect SEEC has been able to achieve a major break through for its clients, specifically, StarStone Insurance. A U.K. based commercial lines insurer, StarStone was recognized by industry analyst, Celent as the model insurer of 2017 for excellence in data mastery and analytics.
“There are three big things that people expect of enterprise technology providers in this day and age. Firstly, I think any new technology solution has to be built on cloud-native technology. This is not something that you can change on the surface; these solutions have to be re-constructed on cloud. Second is the ability to deal with big data. Old systems that were primarily designedto work with traditional data cannot consume unstructured information as easily as structured. The third major driver that builds on the first two is that every process should be machine learning driven because conventional rule-based algorithms cannot produce the same results,” added Pranav.
Historically, in the insurance industry, existing process and forms have been made electronic. Today, we can achieve true digitization by utilizing the full spectrum of technology like big data, AI, ML, blockchain, quantum computing and augmented reality. Pranav said,“Intellect SEEC is well-positioned to realize this confluence because we have built a unique competency in many of these technology areas. Coupled with our deep domain knowledge, 30-year presence in the market and experience in working around the world gives us an edge in conceptualizing how new business models can be created. We really make sure that either innovation or disruption happens for our customers.
"Coupled With Our Deep Domain Knowledge, 30-Year Presence In The Market And Experience In Working Around The World Gives Us An Edge In Conceptualizing How New Business Models Can Be Created. We Really Make Sure That Either Innovation Or Disruption Happens For Our Customers"
One of the first things where Intellect SEEC applied its platform was to check the quality of the traditional information used to underwrite everyday. It conducted an analysis on the incoming quote submissions to seven major U.S. based commercial carriers between January 2017 and January 2018. The results were stunning. While it’s common knowledge in the insurance industry that clients and/or brokers, on occasion, depict risks in a better light to obtain better rates or to get subpar risks through underwriting, the degree of this mis information and its impact on pricing and loss ratio has been statistically proven for the first time through the use of Intellect’s Big Data and AI toolkit.
The company found that 25-30% of submissions had errors in the key rating and underwriting fields, such as employee count,revenue,business operations, location footprint and disclosures about operational practices, past trading and safety history. The error rate was consistent across carrier, line of business and business type. While the general outcome of the study such as the fact that a lot of false information is provided to under writers may not surprise industry insiders. The extent of the false data and its loss ratio impact is quite alarming.
Further,using the risk assessment algorithm, Intellect SEEC has been able to achieve a major break through for its clients, specifically, StarStone Insurance. A U.K. based commercial lines insurer, StarStone was recognized by industry analyst, Celent as the model insurer of 2017 for excellence in data mastery and analytics.
“There are three big things that people expect of enterprise technology providers in this day and age. Firstly, I think any new technology solution has to be built on cloud-native technology. This is not something that you can change on the surface; these solutions have to be re-constructed on cloud. Second is the ability to deal with big data. Old systems that were primarily designedto work with traditional data cannot consume unstructured information as easily as structured. The third major driver that builds on the first two is that every process should be machine learning driven because conventional rule-based algorithms cannot produce the same results,” added Pranav.
Historically, in the insurance industry, existing process and forms have been made electronic. Today, we can achieve true digitization by utilizing the full spectrum of technology like big data, AI, ML, blockchain, quantum computing and augmented reality. Pranav said,“Intellect SEEC is well-positioned to realize this confluence because we have built a unique competency in many of these technology areas. Coupled with our deep domain knowledge, 30-year presence in the market and experience in working around the world gives us an edge in conceptualizing how new business models can be created. We really make sure that either innovation or disruption happens for our customers.
