Technologies improve insurance experience

Statistics from Fintech Magazine in 2019 show customers had to wait an average 30 minutes to contact an insurance agent. An increase in market demand and number of interactive calls poses challenges, but also presents new opportunities for the insurance industry.

A survey conducted by Vietnam Report in mid-2020 indicated the greatest opportunity for the insurance industry lay in the rapid deployment of technology in all stages of the value chain to enhance customer convenience. The Vietnam Report also stated 75.7 percent of customers made product purchasing decisions via digital tools.

Insurers can better reach customers with high technology. Photo by FWD.

The insurance industry is shifting to a more digital model due to the role of technology application in business activities. For instance, FWD Vietnam has cooperated with FPT to deploy FPT.AI and akaAT virtual assistant technology to optimize operations, thereby increasing customer experience.

AI assistant Kooki

FWD is one of the first insurance enterprises in Vietnam to apply artificial intelligence (AI) with Kooki, a technology assistant to support its customer service call center.

Developed on the FPT.AI technology platform, Kooki Technology Assistant is capable of making automatic calls, including natural two-way interaction with gender and region-specific voiceovers to explain insurance contracts, time and methods of payment, payment status...

The conversation between Kooki Technology Assistant and customers will be stored on the system so customer service staff could monitor or access information.

FPT.AI's virtual assistant switchboard helps businesses optimize customer care. Photo by FPT.

"Kooki is capable of scaling up flexibly and handling thousands of customer intents at the same time, without being overloaded during peak hours," Nguyen Thuong Tuong Minh, product manager for FPT.AI said.

Kooki also has the ability to decentralize administration and execute work proactively, which helps FWD save and optimize resources for operation. Employees are no longer stuck in repetitive tasks, but have more time to handle complex professional ones like consulting, sales...

akaAT - Test automation solution at FWD

An insurance company usually conducts a series of system trials on product information, illustrations, subscriptions before launching a new product.

Previously, these tasks were mainly conducted by humans, costing businesses much time and human labor. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for high technology applications in operating insurance businesses was not urgent. But the epidemic forced society to distance itself, with all activities done online, while the number of customers participating in insurance increased... posing a new operating problem for insurance businesses.

At FWD, each insurance product has tens of thousands of cases to examine on the illustration table, specialized per gender, age, fee payment... with detailed cost/payment time each year. Therefore, customers have to wait for more than three weeks for regression tests without high accuracy and that do not cover all case scenarios.

"This is the reason FWD decided to apply FPT's akaAT solution," a FWD Vietnam representative said.

FPT Software engineers work on the akaAT solution. Photo by FPT.

akaAT can reduce human resources, increasing accuracy, and ensure most real-life cases involving customer insurance policies can be tested. From the dashboard maker, the solution can generate more than 13,000 data sets on insurance policies and products with high accuracy.

According to the akaAT engineering team, the number of test cases for each product is estimated at more than 2,000. This entire testing process can help engineers recover over 99 percent of missing data from other functional software operating on FWD’s new and old data system. This helps FWD's product control department increase work efficiency, giving accurate analysis of data for insurance products.

Dao Huu Phuc, Deputy General Director of Insurance and Information Technology Operations at FWD Vietnam, added the application of akaAT to the system testing process before releasing new products to customers has saved more than 50 percent of human resources, increased the accuracy of the insurance system, and contributed to better customer service.

Dao Huu Phuc, Deputy General Director of Insurance and IT Operations of FWD. Photo by FWD.

FPT experts stated an automation process with the assistance of akaAT would enable insurance companies to quickly respond to the complicated situation, grasping the opportunity to train a more active workforce in future.

Together with akaAT, automatic switchboards combined with artificial intelligence would become a duo to optimize customer service, thereby improving business productivity.