Lemonade, a property insurer for New York, have been promoting the excellent service offered by their automated claims-handling artificial intelligence. This is one of those areas, along with automating underwriting, that we should be really excited about. Cutting cost out of the insurance process should be a central goal in technology investments. Sadly, most of these are going to occur elsewhere before we see them in New Zealand. But we should still cheer when we see them, and ask our local insurers why they aren't deploying similar systems.
Other so-called innovations of the new Insurtech companies – such as a direct-to-consumer approach, mutual status, or excess-sharing systems don't bring anything genuinely new. They might still be useful, they may use technology to make those things work better, but if they weren't game-changers to this point, on their own, they won't be game changers in the future. There must be something more.