Inside Insurance Digital Transformation: How AI, Cloud & Adoption Drive Real Change

Speaker A: Foreign. Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another episode of the Digital Adoption Show. I'm your host for today, Rajesh Pantana. I lead enterprise marketing at what Fix. Now today's episode is actually going to be filled with some amazing takeaways as after a lot of episodes at the digital adoption show, we are getting very specific with a particular industry which is this time insurance. And insurance sector overall has had a lot of significant challenges when it comes to transformation. The pressure is always real here and we wanted to basically have someone to simplify these complexities. And who better than like Ganesh, who's basically been at uh, the cusp of it and seen it actually transform firsthand over the last couple of decades. We have with us Ganesh Kumar Pandyan, principal director of insurance solutions and products at LDI mindtree, who's not just watched this industry evolved, but is also been the center of its reinvention. So Ganesh, you've been helping global insurers modernize their core systems, implement high impact technology platforms and drive digital adoption at scale. You've actually been like known to speak a lot about not just what, why, but more about the how and why like you should be doing it. We're really thrilled to have you on board today's show. Ganesh, a warm welcome to you.

Speaker B: Thanks Rajesh. Thank you for having me on the show.

Speaker A: Amazing. So I'm really excited, Ganesh, and speaking of your journey, like I said, two decades is basically a lot and we're always actually excited, you know, first up, to listen about these stories in itself of your journey and what kept you going in such a complicated and complex industry like this. So would really want to understand how insurance basically stuck and what has kept you going throughout these two decades.

Speaker B: Sure. Two decades doesn't seem to be a long time when you are having so much fun. So few years into my career, early professional career, so I joined as a part of lti. Mindtree is a leading IT services company. I was assigned to a insurance project early in my career. As you could remember, this was back in 2006. This was the time, exciting time, when the technology was being adapted. So much being in Internet age was evolving. You could see the technology adoption in multiple places. Be it portal, be it data warehouse, be it enterprise service, bus. There was always uh, something that was evolving over the period of time. And the carts player, especially in insurance, like carts player, like Duckery Guidewire, everything was coming into full blown. So carts was relatively new. And before that many of the customers were dependent on legacy system or uh, client server technology. So this whole evolution, I was at the right time when this whole technology adoption was happening in the insurance industry. The very first assignment I got was for a regional insurance carrier. And you won't believe they were undertaking eight modernization initiatives at the same time being, uh, even though they were being a small company, so they were trying to replace their policy admin system, claim system, they were trying to put a agent portal, introduce an esb, create a data warehouse. So that actually thrilled me and it also gave me an opportunity to understand the impact of, uh, how the system are interconnected, how the system talk to each other and how the data flows from all the way from the agents to the general ledger. And it was the same carrier where I started my Duck Creek expertise as well. So they were implementing Duck Creek for their policy admin system, guideware for the claim system. So I got an opportunity to be part of those. And from there onwards, um, there was no going back. I was so excited about so many things happening. And then as the technology evolved from there, right, there were a lot of talk about digitization, mobile, cloud, local, no code. And now with AI being the talk of the town. So I was fortunate enough to be in part of all the digital modernization or the technology modernization and how it impacts really insurers and how it bring benefits to insurers. And I'm so excited about it. And that's what keeps me going. One common question I keep getting is how do you stay with the Same company for 25 years? That's a common question I get asked by my friends, by my colleagues, by my industry peers. The one thing I would say is that the changes that has gone, I have got to experience in our company because I was part of the delivery. Then I moved into solutions, then part of the package. The Creek first, then Guidewire, Majesco, low code, no code. Worked with many insuretech players and then started working with other ecosystem players such as what fix. It gave me an opportunity not to be stagnant at my career. It always been an exciting journey. Every day is a challenge for me. Every day is something I learned, something new. So the learnings have never stopped for me in the last 20 years and that's what keeps me going.

Speaker A: Amazing, Ganesh. Like really a lot of basically goosebumps as I was listening to you talking about Portal coming in for the first time. And that basically now seems so standard, so mainstream back then that was like one of the biggest transformations. So really lovely to hear about a lot of these examples that you Picked. And of course you've also talked about Gen AI. So we go into a lot of these heavy hitting topics of core modernization that still persists and gen. Uh, but before that, we'll actually do a quick game of this or that. This is nothing but a quick, quirky little game that we do where you are given binary choices and you have to let us know what would you pick if you were to do this or that? And here are your top two. I hope you're ready for this rapid fire round.

Speaker B: Sure. Sounds exciting.

Speaker A: Okay, awesome. So in the age of AI, would you have an AI sidekick or a human clone?

Speaker B: Yeah, I said kick.

Speaker A: Okay, okay. Would you have rather unlimited travel for a year, complete year or a four day work week forever?

Speaker B: Unlimited travel for a year.

Speaker A: Wow. I love the travel, you know, like experience coming out from you. Nice. The mind reader person in you or a future predictor person in you?

Speaker B: The mind reader.

Speaker A: Okay, okay. Hope you're not reading my mind right now. Instant cloud migration or zero resistance from users?

Speaker B: Uh, zero resistance from you, sir.

Speaker A: Wow, that's a dream state, right? That's always our happy path. No, that was fun. That was fun. So yeah, getting back to the core piece that we are here to talk about at the Digital Adoption Show. Diving into the heart of today's conversation quickly now, Ganesh, you've talked about all these transformations that are happening for a long period of time and how you've been actually seeing it endlessly evolve. But at the heart of it all is a uh, business problem statement, a business issue that has to be solved for now. With all these migrations and with all these modernizations, what are uh, the real business factors and market pressures that are driving insurers towards it would love for you to shed some light on that core issue that lies or core opportunity that insurers in general are trying to get into or basically overcome with modernization.

Speaker B: A great question to start with. Insurance industry, like every other industry, revolves around customers, right? So insurance, as you know, traditionally even now it's all lot of forms. Earlier it was paper, now it's all digitized, right? So what we have seen is as the technology has evolved, so as customer trend, there is a shift in customer trends that we have noticed. So we have noticed a change during the Internet age. We have noticed a change in pandemic time. We are now noticing a change in AI days. So what is really driving some of this modernization are obviously the first one is always the customer expectation. Customer expect seamless digital, native and personalized experience today why people are Moving towards Gen AI very quickly because it contextualizes your uh, search. People are moving away from Google search and people are moving to LLM search for the same reason. Because it could remember the context, it could memorize what you need and it can provide you the right information. It can evolve. So there is always an evolving customer expectation. Second thing is that changing business trends like you notice as the customers are changing, so does the risk that uh, insurance has is also changing. There is new risk that is coming like cyber AI model is a new risk now that some of the insurers are underwriting. Catastrophic always has been a challenge. Climate changes. So all those different attributes of business. And the business needs a new system and needs to have new practices and new ways of working. So there has been a definite need for modernization. The third point, and this is the common point that everybody talks about is data. So data is very crucial for any decision making. As insurance industry heavily depends on data. Your pricing, your claims reserve, everything revolves around data. So having the right data and foundational data is very much important. And even today the AI model and anything that AI needs relies on data. So you need to have a right system of records and what else can provide you the right system of records other than this core modernization platform or the new platform. So having the right set of data is very key for some of the modern insurers. And the most important thing, other thing that uh, also overlooked or this is there in all the business cases that how do I reduce my expense ratio? Uh and interestingly if you see the naic report in 2015's time the expense ratio was 27 point x percentage in PNC insurance. Now in last two years it has come under 25, around 25. That's a significant drop in expense ratio. 2% is very significant. Somebody may say that it's only 2% but in insurance industry 2 percentage is significant. So that means that the combined ratio can be still be hundred provided the loss ratios ah, are there are certain things the insurance cannot control like claimant related loss. But this gives them the flexibility. So containing that expense ratio is also one of the key factors why a lot of insurers chose the modernization. And the other thing that what people always look at is that this was very interesting because I was in one of the business cases that claims modernization journey, the CIO and the CXO said that they are not doing this for customers, end customers is fine. But then they are doing this modernization for improving their employee experience. Because the kind of talent that they were getting, they Were not familiar, they don't want to navigate the green screens. They want a more modern UI experience, more native experience, more mobile experience that they are being used to. And their first primary driver is employee experience. I was taken back because I was hearing it for the first time that employee experience also plays a crucial role because there is a shifting aging factor in the insurance industry as well, especially on the claim side and underwriting side. So you need to attract new talent so employee experience becomes a major role. The last one I would also highlight is that as the growth becomes stagnant in certain things or growth becomes unprofitable in certain lines like admitted line of business, insurers are now spreading into excess and surplus market, non admitted line of business specialty market segments. So you need a modern system that can quickly. You need a modern nimble system that can adapt to the changes and insurance so that insurers can take advantage of it. So I know I told lot of point but if I have to summarize, it's to improve the customer experience and employee experience, access to real time data, uh, addressing the changing business needs and reacting to the market conditions. So these are the top drivers that I would put based on my experience that what insurers are looking in the core modernization.

Speaker A: Awesome, awesome. Thanks, Manish. And so I think therein, what you've also probably summarized is a way of looking at it in terms of there is the idea, of course there's revenue that needs to come. You talked about the NAIC figures which then talk about pressures and say so how do you actually get more revenue? Balance costs, that's like one part. And then there is the idea of risk. How do you basically reduce risk at all levels? And for that again you need data. You need everything to work seamlessly right from that data, providing insight for an underwriter or for claims person. And that exists with the employee going and translating to great customer experience for the ultimate policyholder or whoever is being insured. At the end of the day, nobody in your experience, what are uh, like two or three real challenges insurers face in these transitions? Assume someone has decided on a migration or decided on basically a core modernization data like project which brings everything together into one system. But what are some real top two or three challenges that you see everybody will face if they start looking at technology implementations and adoption?

Speaker B: This is for people who are outside of the industry. It's very difficult to understand why the modernization takes a lot of time because for them the auto insurance or uh, the homeowner insurance is same when you take from company X or Y. So what does it differentiate? But beneath it, if you look at every company has a unique secret sauce. They have their own unique way of identifying what risk they want underwrite their differentiating workflow. So these are some of the unique attributes that they have mastered. That's what differentiate them from the rest of the crowd. So we need to configure these attributes very carefully. So we call it this configuration or uh, customization. This is one of the key challenge because we don't want to over customize it that it breaks the upgrade path because a lot of the cars player today like the Creek guideware measures coinsurity. Everybody offers SaaS product. The main advantage is that you get a constant upgrade. You don't want to miss out the upgrades, right? So it's just like Salesforce platform or any other platform. So you need to strike a balance between offering your unique advantage to overlay customization. That has always been a challenge. Telling customers what is the right balance. And whoever has been more successful are the one who has found the right balance. Second thing is more for the customers who have been on the legacy platform and then migrate to new system, not the new entrants fitting their whole core system into the IT estate landscape. This is very overlooked because it is like replacing your heart. The core system is replacing your heart. When your whole body is functioning. You need to make sure that you are not affecting all other body parts. So you need to make sure that you are fitting it. And that means that a lot of plumbing has to be done, a lot of data pipeline has to be created and that is always a complex undertaking for any modernization. The third one is always the human element. Technology is the easy part. The stakeholder engagement involving the right stakeholders, uh, in the decision makings, effective communication, change management always is going to be the key for any successful migration. So these are some of the things that I would say that at what we have seen as challenges in the transformation journeys that we have encountered.

Speaker A: Awesome. Awesome. And I think as you basically talked about that journey in itself there was one part which is cloud transformation, right? One cloud transformation aspect that generally seems to be more complicated in insurance compared to other sectors. Is this largely due to regulation risk or is it something so innate to the industry that maybe only you can shed light on it and you want like our listeners to hear a bit more about it.

Speaker B: The insurance industry is always slow in adapting technology. So when everybody jumped on the cloud, especially retail companies, media companies jumped on the cloud, insurance companies were laggards in Adapting the cloud. And for obvious reason there is always people underestimate the regulation involved in insurance industry. The, the kind of regulation, the kinds of approvals that they need to do even for a simple rate change. It's mind blowing when you look at it can compare to other industry. I'm pretty sure other industries have similar regulations but some of those are very time consuming to even get approval. So insurers always want to make sure that they are okay to follow. Not the leaders in adopting the technology. They are okay to follow but they want to make sure that everything is being taken care of. Your pii, your regional specific insurance regulations, everything has been taken care of. But what we have seen in last few years since Pandemic is that there has been uptick and uh. No resistance in adopting cloud. And lot of these package products like Duck Creek Guidewire, Majesco Sapiens, they are also started offering these products in SaaS platform way. So they are moving away. So they are currently the customers were on prem implementation. Now they are moving to SaaS which helps them to take advantage of continuous upgrade continuous innovations that these product companies can offer. So I am seeing a shift in trend. Maybe it was true like first five and a half years, but last five years we are seeing an like a trend in increased trend in adoption. For the cloud transformation project especially the what the one thing that I would add is there was one primary reason why insurance were little. Insurance companies were little resistant to change. If you look at adopting the cloud because if you look at the core transformation, the data is going to be the key. The data was always required by different stakeholders. Chief Actuarial Officer wants it for the better pricing. Chief Claims Officer wanted it for better reserving purpose. Chief Marketing Officer wants it for identifying the target market segment and etc. Right. So even though the IT systems were managed by the IT team, the the consumption, the users were all over the place and they had created their own models, their own CDPs from exactly so to get those data. So getting the data from on prem system was very easy. While you migrate to cloud there is always a restriction of what data that you could get. So that brought in resistance from some of the stakeholders. But now the have found a way uh, to address those challenges and that has lifted some of the resistance as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, and like you were mentioning I think earlier also the plumbing was not so clear, not so easy in terms of figuring out like how to actually let it flow and what kind of levers. But with cloud I think it's like starting to Become even more easier and like faster in that sense.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: So moving to one critical aspect, like actually you talked about the fact that it is only you know, like shorter part time, the pandemic. However, Gartner has continued to basically release and talk about the fact that every time there is like a wave, something like a pandemic happened, some other technology comes up. There is basically either a consumer wave or basically a technology way business related. Every investment related conversation. And maybe the money also like you know, shoots up. Money poured into it also shoots up and then it all gets stuck as you start looking at your employees and, and you called this out as well as one of the most important aspects. Now Gartner calls out that there are probably 15, 20 applications on a daily basis, softwares on a daily basis that every employee is utilizing. And again we are not sure if they're utilizing, they're supposed to be utilizing and we are not sure if they're utilizing. And therefore making sure that the successful utilization, the successful productivity and impact from that technology is happening is all depending on, on addressing talent gaps, ensuring that internal resistance to digital change is managed well. Now from your view, is it like easier to hire new digital talent or actually retrain current employees to adopt the new technology or is there like a third way? What is basically the best way to solve for this?

Speaker B: This is a common problem across industry, right? If you look at it, there are only two ways, maybe three ways, right? One, you are going to hire an external talent. Second is upskilling and cross skilling. And third is that augmenting with partner resources such as our company sis, who can augment those talent gap. When you compare to when you are going for external hiring, you are going to compete for the same talent that any technology company or any other industry who can pay higher is going to. You are going after the same set of talent. So for us it is the option. For most of the insurance, it is option two. And three, I am not saying that option one is not completely ignored. There are uh, insurance companies who are forming partnership with academia, universities, uh, to hire the talent fresh out of college. Especially in the Hartford area. We have seen that a successful collaboration between the academia and insurance company. Definitely. And in Atlanta as well, it's growing. Where we are seeing also is the second most important is upskilling and cross skilling your own talent. Right? So uh, striking a balance is going to be the key, right? Because you also want to find out, you don't want to lose the industry knowledge because at the end of the day you also need a strong domain experience. So you need to cross skill upskill your own employees. Finding a right person with the right aptitude within organization and training them is going to be the key in this regard. We are seeing lot of insurers running training programs partnership with technology players. They are conducting hackathon innovation days to drive some of this. I believe this will not only bridge the talent gap, but also foster a culture of continuous learning and innovation within the organization. The other trend I'm also seeing is that Microsoft, aws, Google, they all offer learning and certification which is very great for users to adapt the technology. But we're also seeing a lot of this in the core players like Guidewide, Duck Creek, Majesco, they are offering learning and certification program. And these are not only technical program, they are also have adapted now Persona based training program. A business analyst from a end user perspective, how are these training programs? Uh, certification programs are being created. So I'm seeing lot of shift and lot of enablement from this technology company to make end users adapt this technologies faster. And obviously there are certain gaps, certain companies like what Fix itself is filling those gaps wherever there are some gaps. Right. So all those things coming together I see in the priority wise I, I believe the insurers, it's better if they adapt upskill and cross skill their own talent followed by augmenting with si and then I'm going for the new talent. So that's a trend that I'm seeing at least in the market.

Speaker A: Awesome. So now actually there was one very unique study, I think it was done um, like a few years ago, two, three years ago with Deloitte, where it talked about learning in the flow of work. And it was actually talking about the fact that not all trainings, not all certifications, like once you've seen a video, once you've basically gone through a PDF, you might not be able to actually solve for everything that comes your way on an application. And that's where the idea of digital adoption, platform workflows, etc basically come into play. Could you share an example of where you've seen that to be a game changer? Of course, along with the conventional pieces, be it onboarding and training, be it data validation, be it more core business impact in terms of ensuring the right kind of underwriting checks over there, kind of claims processing time, so on and so forth. So is there an impact that you've seen on the employee itself with something like a digital adoption platform?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So if I was referring the organizational change management is one of the key elements for successful transformation. So. So gone are those days when there were classroom trainings were conducted, manuals uh, were distributed. Right. Today we are living in a age of YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels where the attention span is not more than 15 seconds.

Speaker A: So I get my news daily from Insta. So yeah, I can totally understand.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So even if you're going to take the training and certification, you are right it's not going to be as effective. So what users need is getting the right information at the right time. That's going to be the key. And it all depends on it cannot and one size doesn't fit all. Like if I'm a novice user, if I'm an experienced user, my level of experience will be different than if you are an early user or if you are a beginner in the insurance industry. I may bypass some steps or I may know exactly workaround to get it done faster. So my level of training will be completely different than what is your level of training. So this is where contextual help and implementing a digital adoption platform or having a digital adoption platform is a critical success factor that I would emphasize for every insurer taking on the modernization journey. So you need to have right information at the user's fingertip when they need it, not the other way around. You are going to last precious time. If they are going to look at some manuals instead of giving them the guidance within the application at the time of need, then the information that you are going to search, it's going to go. They are going to open one document from one document, they are going to go to other system, they are going to talk to users that you are going to lose some of the productiv hours. So where we have seen in some of the places where we have also seen is that you know, in such platforms are not adapted. There is an uptick in the user queries. After all the trainings that you mentioned about, there is an uptick in queries. The call center volume has gone up. But where we have seen the other way trend is that when they have a digital adoption platform it has been a smooth. There has been not a serious uptick of the user queries or everything at all. You have to also consider the cost not only for the end user but also the contact center. The contact center or call center turns into an IT query. You are wasting a time of an IT business analyst. So it's a ripple effect. So it's not just about the end user productivity. It also about impacts the IT team productivity. The call center productivity, the volume, etc. So coming to digital adoption platform, having this guided help, contextual help, having the right information, workflow and depending on the user level is all makes a significant difference in making a ah, transformation, the best transformation or a good transformation. So adoption is always going to be the key, the end user is always going to hold the key of the successful transformation. So I would highly encourage all the insurers to look at digital adoption platform as one of the way to maximize your return on investment, to maximize the benefit of the transformation.

Speaker A: Yeah, that aspect where you've also talked about downstream impact. Right. Like in a lot of ways today if anybody, a customer like you had mentioned opens up basically their application, they're referring to their either their current insurance or basically a new policy that they basically want to go through. They always get guidance within the app and they in this age of like short attention spans, they really want to understand where do I go to solve for what I have. And that is basically going to be so much more important as you actually go through the employee and directly to the customer. Right. So have you seen instances where something like this deployed on the CX side of things as amplified either basically the customer experience or overall the customer experience overall or it has reduced the claims time or the ease of handling basically claims or ease of processing new policies at your end or do you see the scope and you feel that yeah, this is something that can be revolutionized via dat.

Speaker B: There are many, many examples. Two examples that come to my mind is one of our uh, customer implemented what fix on the CRM platform? Salesforce platform. So it kind of helped them to streamline the lead generation process entering the information so we could see an increase in productivity and also we could also see the data is being entered properly. The most important point is not about the productivity but also when you are capturing the lead data you need to ensure like a point back that data is going to be the biggest asset. So you need to ensure that you are capturing all the information, relevant information required for my company not only to sell this insurance but also any potential upscale uh, or cross skill opportunity. So that kind of streamlined the process and that was a challenge there. So it solved the problem. Second thing is one of the case studies claims. When they rolled out Claim center, what fix was adopted and it reduced onboard time by almost by 50 percentage. So a person getting familiar with the system, uh, Claim center reduced drop significantly and they were going through a catastrophe at that time. Um, the catastrophe hit right after the claim center implementation and they have to onboard some temporary staff which is typical in case of insurance company. So they were able to reduce the onboard time even for the new people, the new temp workers that they have to hire. So all this thanks to what fix and the leading digital adoption platform for enabling those kind of quicker adoption. So that's one of the thing and as you, as you navigate think about this, right? A new uh, catastrophe is going to hit and you are hiring a temp and obviously there will be some um, leads who will be guiding you. But then as a temp you are on the phone with the customer. You need to make sure that you need a system that can guide you through exactly what information, have some empathetic conversation with the customer at the same time, right? So having those right guidance and triggering right questions to ask in the right way is going to be a huge differentiating factor from the customer experience. As uh, you all know that the moment of truth happens only in certain during the claims, especially in insurance industry and only during the claims interaction. So those kind of ah, interaction can go a long way and can retain the customers for many years to come. So those are some of the tangible benefits that we have seen in terms of digital adoption platform. In terms of what fix especially yeah,

Speaker A: translating that PNG methodology of moments of truth. I love you talking about it. Like the third moment of truth when they'll really want to talk about it is when they've had that customer experience. That's really amazing like you said and especially I remember like even recently when it's been like more frequent, like the catastrophes have become more frequent and there is also regulation right on top of it that you have to start responding and you have to do it within a specific time frame. And in such situations it's so many layers and so many complexities that the temp has also to figure out. They have to understand that it's very time bound. It is also the fact that they have to learn everything to the T and really do it well. And like you said, be really empathetic, deliver that you know, good, really like human touch when you're speaking and it shouldn't be like extremely transactional. And that's where this helps you be human. Whereas you know the system which is the dip helps you like run through with some nudges with workflows, so on and so forth. Love how you talked about like moments of truth there. Really, really nice. Now quickly moving to the next part. Right, like in this, the next evolution that we are seeing is of course AI uh, like for prediction, Gartner prediction. Everybody's saying it. But Forester has called out one very important part which is saying that despite all the excitement surrounding AI, fewer than 5% of insurers are expected to see direct tangible gains from this technology in the near term. Now is it the Lagard issue? Is it something else? Probably you can shed more light, but the main question that I'm coming to is that what is the scope you're seeing? Let's start with that. Where do you see generative AI really delivering value? And what are you actually implementing like right now? Here and now.

Speaker B: Great. I would have to disagree with Forrester on this one because we are seeing

Speaker A: more in that spoken to you Ganesh. So we'll have them speak to you.

Speaker B: No, I respect all the analysts because they bring a pragmatic view. They have access to more CXOs than us, but at least in our customers, what we are seeing more indirect benefits. Right. The one part I would say is that, you know, they are not reaching maybe full potential because there is lack of a literacy. Obviously regulation plays a key role. We talked about it and some of the employees do not adapt it or even not aware of it. Right. That's been some of the pilots, copilots has been rolled to their area. So addressing these is going to be critical. More communication, again, contextual help is required for users to adopt it as well. For what we are seeing right now is that you need to select. There is always a huge excitement when any new technology comes into market, right. Everybody wants to play work on it. And Genai was one of the technology where every insurance company, every employee within insurance company had an motivation to work because it has truly evolutionized and everybody wants to know how it is going to impact me. So where we are seeing the right use cases is there are three areas. One is that how do I improve my customer experience? So customer experience is one area where we are seeing a lot of benefit. So users can access 247 information. Right. They don't have to wait for any human element. No wait time, no hold time. I can get to a customer service representative or a ah, virtual agent at my time. No pressure. Localization language translation is becoming mainstream. Real time language translation, contextual experience and empathetic having an empathetic conversation. You could see some of those insurtech players and some of the contact center. You could switch the language real time. It will understand, it will not lose the context will give you still able to provide the right information. Right. So that's one area that we are seeing, second thing is that we are seeing is that where productivity in terms of both from the underwriting side as well as on the claim side. As you could know in insurance you need to go through a lot of documents to even underwriter risk. So ensuring that insurance it gives a lot of unstructured documents still happens. Like people send like 50 pages of documents, 60 pages of document, hundreds pages of document. So you need someone to summarize you what is very important for you to underwrite the risk so that underwriter doesn't have to go through it. So getting those kind of an information for underwriter, similarly for the claims, how do I ensure that I process the claims very quickly, go through all the assessment or uh, aided assessment, how do I take that into consideration and resolve the claims very quickly is going to be the key. So these are some of the other area that where we have seen in terms of productivity, in terms of. We are also seeing a lot of things on the sales side, especially on the live side. Um, you know, it could process the score, the prospect, create the personal email, create a quote that is specifically for them. So more on the sales, distribution and servicing side also we are seeing a lot of use cases, early adoption of use cases. What you will not see in insurance industry is like a uh, mainstream like rating engine is not going to be AI driven because all those things like we talked about is highly regulated, which it needs to be. You are not going to see some of the other typical challenges like bias and everything playing a key role here because you are not going to put it on a mainstream but you are going to use it more of a productivity gain, servicing customer experience. So that's where we are seeing lot of improved adoption and that's where we are, we have launched and we have, you know, many of our use cases are live in production as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And because you mentioned it, I remember a very recent use case. I was inquiring about my policy and actually there was an AI, you know, basically system which was getting my name and of course like with my complicated name, it was able to pronounce it right. It was also able to actually spell it out and then like follow up like you said did use context at any point, followed up and then ensured that all my details were produced and like specific query was addressed in that too sequentially without basically having to transfer it or send it to someone else. So that really reassured that yes, there is enough happening and it's happening very fast as well. Right. So that's not going to take Ages again. That's one part that I think we all feel it might take a lot of time with penetration but here it's happening very fast. What do you think?

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And. And I was surprised when I was giving it when we were giving a demo with trying to do with English to Spanish and it could sense the frustration voice. It could. It would immediately apologetically saying that okay. And then it was say that okay. It was my bad. And just like a human interaction, right. Kind of calms you down and then gets the right information. And it always goes back to you know what we talked about, right? Information at the right time. The users, that's what they are looking for. They don't want to work on insurers time, they want to work on their time. Everybody now need their information at the time that they have, not the other way around. So all these things is really is going to help.

Speaker A: Awesome, awesome. Just one last thing on this again like we've talked about multiple pieces like core modernization, other maybe technologies, custom apps, everything again needs adoption. Again with AI is it the same? And you mentioned it to an extent, but is it the same? Where do you think it'll take more AI adoption will become important. And again like what fix for AI uh, or what fix digital option platform for AI will be more essential. Do you see some scenarios arising? Do you think that this would also be something that will become a conversation in the future?

Speaker B: No, it is the essence right now. The time is right now. There is no future. It's happening right now. And we definitely need a plan platform. Right. I don't know whether you listen to. There was a article yesterday about uh Shopify CEO mentioning that you know he will not approve any new recruitment until they get proved that you know that task cannot be completed by any. Right. So you need to ensure that you know you are going to. The uh, users are going to adapt and they are going to use AI to the full extent. So you definitely need to monitor how the usage or the usage pattern. You need to monitor it. You need to identify where there are gaps in adapting. Right. And you need to start nudging and I like the word nudging and that what fix uses so that you could see, you could slowly make them familiarize with the platform. Sometimes human nature, they just used to do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for several years and it goes without in an unconscious mind they just keep doing it. Now you have 2 and 3 being replaced by any AI so ignites and you take some actions around it. Right. So definitely adoption tool Is what we say adoption, such as what we say adoption is really required so that we could trigger some user uh, experience or trigger, trigger some action so that it can motivate the users. I was at the Warpix conference last week and we were seeing some of one of the not related to insurance industry, but someone else was telling them that they made, they used what fix platform to enable gamification. So the users completed uh, a certain workflow in a way that what the company wants them to do, they get special points or they get some hooray, you want some points. So there are several ways that you could enable adoption and adoption is going to be the key because you could roll out as many as copilot, as many as AI models that you want. But end of the day it's up to the users. You want to make sure that the users are truly engaging and truly adopting it and utilizing it. So definitely an adoption plays a key role. And this will also give an opportunity for the IT stakeholders and other stakeholders to see what is actually being useful. Right. You also need to draw some analytics. You cannot keep on rolling, you know, model, uh, copilot after copilot. Sometime you need to decommission because everything has a cost associated to it. So you need to decommission, you need to roll out new features. So these kind of analytics along with adoption can be a great value added by a platform such as what picks.

Speaker A: Awesome, awesome Ganesh. And I think that hits on the core aspect of the TCO that everybody eventually wants to look at and optimize. And um, this analytics plus basically DAP helps you actually figure out what is giving you the most bang for your buck. That's really brilliant. Ganesh, really loved having you on the show. You've been an incredible guest. But before we close this out, any final thoughts or top two? Three key pieces of advice for people who are listening from the insurance sector to this digital adoption show anything that you want to share.

Speaker B: Once again, thank you so much for having me the show, it was a very engaging conversation. So my last my two senses. Human is always going to be the key driving factor for your successful transformation. The human is a surprising element, right? You cannot predict human behavior. So having a platform such as adoption platform, and I was jokingly telling some of your colleagues at the conference saying that the digital adoption platform itself needs to be renamed because it confines you only to digital platforms. It's more than digital now. You need to probably come up with a better word. So adoption is going to be the key. The modernization is going to continue and insurers uh, are going to continue to spend in the current macro environment. AI is not going to be, is going to become mainstream and you need to have a core modern platform, preferably on the cloud to have the right data at the right time so that your model can work effectively. To sum it all up, you also need a human element, an adoption platform to ensure that you, your users are using it at the appropriate time. So that's my $0.02 on what I could say.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks a lot Ganesh. Uh, really lovely again to have had you on this truly impactful episode. Uh, now to all our listeners, you can catch us on all major podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Don't forget to like share and subscribe to the Digital Adoption show for more conversations like these. I'm your host Rajesh Pantina. Uh, signing off. See you in the next episode.