As adoption of AI technology continues to dominate public discourses across the re/insurance industry, some of the major leading firms, including Swiss Re and Munich Re, say that the deployment of the technology within the sector remains within its early days and piloting stages.
Speaking at Swiss Re’s Baden-Baden media conference, Chief Underwriting Officer, Global Specialty, Swiss Re, Anne Lohbeck, was quoted by Reinsurance News, an online medium, as saying that the company hears that everybody at this point was “really piloting” the technology.
She said: “Talking to clients and also talking to competitors, we hear that everybody at this point in time is really piloting. They’re piloting the usage of AI to support information, gathering to support information aggregation, but then still very much use human intelligence to make decisions. And I think anything that sort of continues beyond that is very much a work in progress.”
However, the industry expert said that there were “huge promises” from AI and that for now it had become imperative for the entire industry to “put in a bit more work” to uncover what the promises may hold, and to what degree the industry will be able to leverage it.
In his remarks from a casualty perspective during the media briefing, , Head of Casualty Underwriting, EMEA, Swiss Re, Patrick Roder, explained: “I think we’re also monitoring this really very much from a risk perspective. As mentioned before, the new product liability directive that is currently in the pipeline, there’s also the new AI directive.
“Now, we don’t really know where it’s landing, it’s still being debated. But let’s just say, if for example, an algorithm is designated to be part of the product, that could also become very much a casualty liability topic, basically.
“AI support decision making processes in HR could become an employment practice liability exposure. So, we’re very much also monitoring this to make sure we really understand what it means from an underwriting risk taking perspective”, Roder added.
Before the Swiss Re media conference, the topic of AI was also discussed during Munich Re’s media briefing ahead of Baden-Baden during which a member of the board of the firm’s management, Clarisse Kopff, explained that the AI regulatory environment is “really nascent”.
She explained that the topic is still early in discussion and that it remains unclear whether there will be some new products.
Industry experts believe it remains very clear that AI is still within its early days of being deployed across the re/insurance industry, but the technology clearly has the potential to play an important role across many parts of the business.
