The Pandemic impacted the L&A insurance industry in a number of ways. Shelter-in-place drove insurers to accelerate digitization, especially on the customer facing end. According to a Novarica report, 65% of large and midsize life and annuity companies are now either prioritizing or accelerating digital initiatives. These complex projects traditionally were approved a year or two ago, requiring a wide buy-in from executives and IT experts however, the Pandemic clearly created the disruption for the industry.
When the Pandemic hit the US and Europe, there were two forces concurrently working. The first—increasing demand and rise in the awareness of life insurance policies resulted in the public’s high demand for security coverage. The second effect was on the insurance companies who were unable to complete on-line processes such as underwriting or even receiving medical records due to the rise in the number of patients. These two forces pushed insurers to complete the digitization process that started previously. Digitization in the industry created more opportunities for innovation and optimization. Atidot realizes these opportunities and plays a big role in transferring the data into real-time strategy.
A Cloud-Based Platform Providing Data-Driven Insights
Atidot is a leader in predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools for the life insurance and annuity industry. It uses cloud-based platform to provide data-driven insights for the life insurance and annuities industry. Its algorithms utilize anonymized data to generate nano-segments of insurers policyholders, translating it to actionable insights. These insights enable insurers to generate real-time visibility of their portfolio.
Atidot solutions provide a deep understanding of insurers product positioning and competitive landscape. The modules enable insurers to adjust their product or distribution strategy dynamically to optimize market penetration and increase market share. It provides a full view of the impact of product and pricing changes based on prior sales performance and an external industry database. In addition, AI and Machine Learning capabilities detect and provide predictions of market trends and future performance based on product selection, producer group, producer, location, demographic, and other critical factors. The result is that insurers can now change their product strategy in real time and react immediately to market conditions and competition.
A Data Enthusiast
Dror Katzav, Co-Founder & CEO is a data enthusiast and served in an elite intelligence unit in the Israeli Army for many years. In 2016, Dror and Barak Bercovitz (Atidot Co-Founder, CTO) who shared the same enthusiasm, decided to combine their deep understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and apply that knowledge to an industry lacking data analytics. After assessing multiple industries, Life Insurance stood out as a sector deficient in data-driven support—up to 80% of data held by life insurers was not being used for strategic purposes.
This understanding triggered the launch of Atidot, one the first technology companies to utilize AI, machine learning and predictive analytics on life insurance data. They teamed up with leading actuarial experts, such as the former Insurance Commissioner of Israel and the Chief Actuary of the Israel Ministry of Finance as well as with a leading US actuary from Prudential and TIAA, to design the solutions and start exploring market opportunities.
Maintaining Team Spirit Alongside Swift Adaptability
As the CEO, Dror is constantly communicating with clients, analysts and prospects to understand the evolving industry challenges, translate those understanding into AI and Machine learning solutions that can help with these challenges and into out of the box use case that can be delivered back to customers. To overcome the challenges present in the industry and to successfully deliver solutions the company mainly focuses on three aspects—self-motivation, innovation, and agility. Dror and his team which consists of a group of seasoned actuaries, data scientists, software developers as well as sales and marketing professionals were accustomed to working globally and remotely on a flexible schedule, so the current environment of working from home has not been a significant challenge for them.
As soon as the COVID19 outbreak became a pandemic, Atidot immediately changed its marketing and sales strategies to become more online focused and were able to communicate and touch base with prospects and customers remotely. It has more frequent, albeit shorter, all-hands internal meetings (all online, of course) to maintain team spirit as well as ensure coordination between the various teams. The company mostly focused on expanding its customer base and on expanding the core offering. Recently, it announced that Pacific Life chose the groundbreaking iPipeline / Atidot Pricing Benchmark solution, and it is working on additional solutions with other partners, besides enhancing the own core offerings. Pacific Life is one of Atidot’s customers and has selected its solution on top of iPipeline’s largest data set in the life industry.
A Step into The Future
In the future of carriers in the Life and Annuity industry, macro-economic changes such as plunging interest rates affecting insurers income from investments, regulations regarding products, rates and different insurance premiums all play a role. The outbreak of the pandemic is driving down the economy, raising unemployment to 20% or more, and affecting policyholder ability to pay premiums. All these challenges that are taking place all at once demand a real time action in companies’ strategy and this is where Atidot offers its solution.
As a carrier, Atidot provides the ability to reevaluate the place in the market with respect to the competition on a per product, per target audience basis and even predict future trends to stay ahead of the game. This is clearly a step into the future in terms of managing insurers’ portfolio and customer relationships. The team works closely with its clients and prospects to ensure that solutions provide the insights, alerts and information they are lacking. The company is partnered with prominent companies such as Tech Mahindra, Deloitte and EXL to enhance its offering with their extensive delivery, customization, and support capabilities.
Read full magazine :Â The 10 Elite Insurance Companies of 2020
