Will Siri and Alexa be the future insurance agents?
Imagine a day in the near future when you are talking to your iPhone or Amazon Echo to buy insurance products. This is not a far pitched idea and most likely on the horizon. Siri and Alexa are used to order online consumer products already, get directions, the news, turn on appliances, ask the weather, etc. The question for us InsuranceSharks becomes: Will Siri and Alexa be the future insurance agents?
Possibly, it’s exciting to think that Google, Amazon, Apple will be distribution sources for insurance companies to access customers.
It would be interesting for risk bearers to partner with these firms to access risks that fit their respective appetites. Or set up Captive agencies with one of these distribution sources.
If Siri and Alexa are programmed with Chatbot capabilities and standard questionnaires, what is preventing them from becoming agents – executing your insurance transactions? It would be great to be walked through the purchase, with a handset, tied to the phone – but the insurance questionnaire for standard risks might need to be shortened. As these technologies advance the options are endless.
Voice recognition software will not be limited to insurance purchases, but if it makes the leap to insurance – it is exciting.
If so, will these devices also record and document risky behaviors? How much data can be collected in addition to the standard questions? Does buying habits or driving habits get imported?
See also...Will Waze start offering Usage Based Insurance?
The question of privacy concerns is starting to reach the public sphere with discussions about databreaches, third party vendors security of the data, etc. i.e. Facebook.
Will customers want their insurance agent listening to them?
The balance between privacy and customer ease of doing business is a real concern.
See also...Privacy issues vs. Insurance Cost savings
It is exciting to be able to walk and talk through the insurance purchase without leaving your home. It will also be exciting for insurance underwriters to build an API off this type of technology to build a risk appetite and ideal customer using entirely new data points from used historically.
If regulators allow rate making to be developed off new exciting data will soon become clearer.
The Insurance business was historically an unsexy business without a lot of outside competition, but things are changing.
The best is yet to come.
