AI With a Human Touch: Hi Marley CEO Says Insurers Should Strive to Be Loved

This article is part of Carrier Management’s series on the Future of Insurance.

Mike Greene, CEO and Co-Founder, Hi Marley, says that “love” and “trust” aren’t terms currently used by customers to describe relationships with insurers—but they should be.

Mike Greene, CEO and Co-Founder, Hi Marley

Mike Greene is CEO and Co-Founder of Hi Marley. https://himarley.com/

Hi Marley enables insurance companies to engage and delight their customers at scale and to significantly reduce the costs of servicing customers through artificial intelligence with a human touch.

Greene has over 18 years of experience as an innovator in the insurance industry. He has worked with over 50 insurance companies globally to assess challenges and provide business and software solutions. Previously, he helped launch Futurity Group (acquired by Aon), a software and services company focused on property/casualty claims. Post-acquisition, he co-led the Inpoint Claims practice at Aon.

Greene was formerly an Associate Partner with IBM’s Global Business Services and began his career as a management consultant with Accenture’s Insurance Practice.

Q: What major changes do you see on the horizon for the property/casualty insurance industry in the next 10 years?

Greene (Hi Marley): When most people think about a long-term relationship founded in trust, their insurance company usually isn’t top of mind. But what if insurance were to become more “trusted”—and even “loved”—in the future? What would need to happen for a customer to say, “I love my relationship with my insurance company, I can’t imagine switching”?

Some key elements would probably include greater transparency to allow customers to pursue lifetime value over price, products that are simple and complete, and coverages that are adaptable to better fit the unique “lifestyles” of individuals and companies.

I believe artificial intelligence (AI) will begin to take on a bigger role in our industry. AI pushes the envelope on the entire concept of insurance and will eventually allow the better insurance companies to engage with customers proactively across the entire risk life cycle, from identifying the most appropriate insurance coverage at the start and adapting along the journey to engaging with clients and across industries to mitigate risk and offering concierge-level service to make the customer whole in those moments of truth.

With AI as part of the conversation, I believe we have an opportunity to renovate an entire industry.

Although the fundamental objective for insurance of protecting people and their things will remain the same, the digital revolution allows our industry to reimagine how this is done and actively engage based on points on the spectrum that were previously black boxes.

The digital revolution and the current boom is sparking—and even demanding—innovation in the insurance space. There are new risk profiles emerging for which no previous insurance product had been designed. Just consider recent coverages for ridesharing apps, Airbnb, drones and even driverless cars. You have companies experimenting with cost improvements via pay-as-you-go pricing models and entrepreneurs exploring on-demand microinsurance. And the list goes on.

I think what we have seen in other industries will also hold true in insurance. There are a lot of new niche products experimenting with different facets of the industry, but this added complexity can make it harder for the customer to keep track, leading again to a demand for simplicity. At the end of the day, every strategy comes down to delighting the customer.

“With AI as part of the conversation, I believe we have an opportunity to renovate an entire industry.”

For example, I could see a day where the industry is insuring and protecting individuals and their lifestyle with no gaps, no overlap and one premium. There would be a lot of complexity going on behind the curtain to enable that, but I think it’s certainly one direction in which the industry could evolve.

Obviously, it’s an exciting time to be in the InsurTech space. With so much opportunity, the question is, where do you start?

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