Dig|In 2019: The Digital Transformation of Insurance

Dig|In 2019: The Digital Transformation of Insurance

Melissa Cobb

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For the third consecutive year, Guidewire was a sponsor of Dig|In—the conference that focuses on digital trends and disruption in the insurance industry. Executives from insurance companies represent only about 45% of Dig|In attendees. The majority of conference attendees are from solution providers and insurtechs or are consultants and investors. Held annually in Austin, Texas, Dig|In is presented by Digital Insurance, a magazine and website that attracts more than 200,000 senior-level insurance professionals. For 2019, the conference theme was “The Digital Transformation of Insurance.”

Representatives and exhibitors from the insurtech and solution provider sectors played a prominent role at Dig|In, especially in the demo presentations held on the main stage on May 29 ‒ 30. Each demo, limited to a maximum of eight minutes, introduced the audience to one of the latest innovations in digital insurance technology. FRISS, a Guidewire PartnerConnect™ Solution partner, demonstrated a unique story about detecting and preventing P&C insurance fraud. The FRISS solution is powered by artificial intelligence and ranks each claim with a risk score.

Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Vehicles

Dig|In sessions were divided into ten tracks, such as Personal Lines P&C, IoT/Telematics, and Growth and Opportunity. Of special interest were presentations about two trending topics in property and casualty insurance: artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

Ben Vigoda (CEO and founder of Gamalon) was one of four keynote speakers on the conference’s opening afternoon. Speaking on the topic of using artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance customer experiences, Vigoda focused on Gamalon’s next-gen AI based on cognitive “Idea Learning.” By examining examples of actual customer communications, Gamalon can learn and leverage natural human conversation to produce accurate dialogue and responses. Vigoda explained how Gamalon’s conversational intelligence can help insurers provide customer service that’s contextual, accurate, and extremely realistic.

Presenting a session in the Auto track of the conference, Deeksha Joshi (Managing Director of Corporate Strategy and Research at Liberty Mutual Insurance) spoke about the disruptive challenges that autonomous vehicles have created for insurance companies. Joshi presented an overview of current trends in autonomous driving that are changing the landscape of automobile risk. She explained that the vast amounts of data coming from car telematics will help the P&C industry develop more active risk models, products, and interfaces for measuring and successfully managing auto and fleet risk, including related cyber threats.

Innovation

Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple and Inventor of the Apple II, participated in a fireside chat with Maggie Stys, Founder of Dreyev, an insurtech, which covered a wide range of topics including innovation and privacy. According to Wozniak, although innovation is happening across the insurance industry (as well as other industries) at a rapid pace, there’s still room for improvement in the process. He elaborated and shared his thoughts on why companies often fail to nurture new ideas and what they could do better. Wozniak said, "It’s like human concerns almost never come out. In my time at Apple, we always made computers that were easy to use. That meant, make them usable by humans intuitively without making them have to learn and memorize things. That meant the human was more important than the technology.”

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“The Woz” – Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak participated in a fireside chat to offer his views on a wide variety of technology topics impacting insurance today, including autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of things.

Guidewire at Dig|In

Guidewire’s Oliver Winkenbach, Business Owner, Digital Channel Product Marketing, and Scott Plummer, Senior Director, Product Management, presented on, “Winning Through Customer-Centric Customer Engagement,” in a breakfast briefing at the conference. The audience was very engaged in the presentation and asked several questions at the conclusion of the session.

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Scott Plummer and Oliver Winkenbach speaking during their breakfast briefing at Dig|In

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Activity at the Guidewire booth during the conference

In summary, this year’s conference theme, “The Digital Transformation of Insurance,” was evident throughout the event via the technologies, trends, business models, and case studies presented. Dig|In 2019 offered attendees a look at the current state of disruption within the insurance market and a glimpse into the industry’s future.

Guidewire's Richard Wallis and Albert Lin contributed to this blog post.

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