In a move designed to enhance decision-making and provide its clients with an innovative way of embracing the latest technology innovations, SilverBridge, a provider of insurance software solutions for the African financial services industry, has launched its Artificial Intelligence (AI) division focusing on Merlynn’s Tacit Object Modeller (TOM).
“Given the amount of data available to insurers, it has become increasingly important to leverage it with meaningful insights and make more accurate predictions on everything from client risk to policy enhancements,” said Johan Reyneke, Research and Development Executive at SilverBridge.
“Decision-making in the machine-learning space is largely a rules-based process and does not take intuition into account. TOM changes this.”
Essentially, TOM learns from human experts and not from data. It then applies the subject matter expertise based on the person’s experience to make decisions. This experience includes rules but also accounts for the ‘gut feeling’ or humanised decisions. From this, SilverBridge can introduce a virtual expert that aids customers with the decision-making process which can complement data analytics.
“SilverBridge does not want to replace the role of data analytics in AI but use the innovation enabled by TOM to complement it and give its customers the ability to make humanised decisions which is explainable,” added Reyneke.
“Unlike more traditional AI tools, TOM empowers an insurer to provide its customers feedback on why certain decisions were made around their policy. This can range from how premiums are determined to the outcome of a claim’s decision.”
TOM can be used to screen all short-term policies on renewal with the intention to reassess the risk associated to the policy or to identify the opportunities for cross or up-selling in real-time. Traditionally, insurers do not reassess all policies on their anniversary. Rather, a selected few flagged as risky because the insurer cannot afford the human resources required to handle the sheer volume of policies to be assessed.
“So, not only do the risks need to be managed better, but also the opportunities that potentially exist must be capitalised on,” explained Reyneke.
“TOM essentially virtualises the underwriter daily to enable the insurer to understand each of its policies better. In turn, this allows either upselling to take place or policy restructurings to be done more effectively.”
The SilverBridge AI division will therefore provide customers with more agile ways to enhance AI and machine learning in their organisations and capitalise on trends to make decisions faster.
“This intuition-based approach has the potential to fundamentally change not only insurance, but any industry that has been desperate to take AI to the next level,” said Reyneke.
