Insurtech platform Igloo is delivering new and innovative insurance products that make use of data and machine learning technology to build the future of insurance in Asia. Founded by former Grab CTO Wei Zhu as “Axinan” in 2016, the company has gone from strength to strength. This year, it has expanded operations, extending its regional footprint (Indonesia, Thailand, The Philippines, and Singapore) to include Vietnam and Malaysia. The company also has its tech hub in Chengdu and boasts customer service operations across all markets.
Having crossed over 120 employees in 2021, the regional insurtech startup has processed over 150 million policies to date, through key partnerships with e-commerce, banking, and logistics companies, including online e-commerce giants, Shopee, Bukalapak, and food delivery pioneer, foodpanda. This year, it has also made forays into new industries through partnerships with e-wallet providers GCash in the Philippines, Dana in Indonesia, and healthtech platform HD in Thailand.
As the first full-stack insurtech startup out of Singapore, it creates and delivers digital insurance products to the Southeast Asian market by leveraging Big Data, Machine Learning, and AI to give people the “insurance they deserve”.
How Igloo Insure helps improve the state of insurance in the region
The insurance gap in Asia is estimated to be around US$134 billion. With Asia being home to one of the highest number of uninsured populations in the world, healthcare, savings, and protection gaps are only further magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the same time, state-enforced lockdowns and movement restrictions have motivated further shifts in consumer demand from offline to online.
With many transactions concentrated in digital sales platforms, consumers now deal with a slew of new risk exposures in e-commerce, goods in transit, and online payments. This is one of the ways Igloo delivers on its promise, offering evolved customer-centric insurance propositions that cover cybersecurity threats, online fraud; transit or delivery protection.
Beyond this, Igloo understands the need to serve people across the whole value chain on an end-to-end basis. From discovery and purchase, users get to enjoy an optimised experience for discovering and selecting insurance products. Coverage and details are also introduced to users in a direct and simple manner, without the barrier of complex jargon and terminologies that can lengthen and dissuade user interest, making way for direct communication and, ultimately, for easy and convenient payment methods.
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Igloo also offers a seamless policy activation and management experience through its sophisticated technology stack which powers a self-serve platform for frictionless policy activation and management. Their platform is also equipped with authenticated access to ensure the security of both personal and policy information, coupled with an automated payment renewal that can be switched on and off based on preferences.
Lastly, Igloo has powered their claims management capabilities with an online claim submission mechanism for expedited processing and reimbursements through its quick and immediate claim and reimbursement notification system that provides status updates, and a multi-channel customer support available for assistance to make sure that users are able to engage with Igloo Insure’s system intuitively and without hassle.
This is a big deal for a highly developed region populated by people who tend to veer away from insurance services that are either too costly or are difficult to understand. Through this seamless end-to-end experience that helps users and potential users discover, use, and continue enjoying a variety of insurance products, Igloo Insure is leading the charge in the insurtech sector in Asia.
Claimbot: the future of Insurance claims?
One of the most problematic areas in insurance is the claims process. On top of being a very lengthy and often bureaucratic experience, potential insurance customers are dissuaded by the amount of documents that need to be compiled in order to make a claim which is why Igloo Insure is trying to alleviate manual processes in the claims management space – via its AI-powered claims assessment and processing solution. Upon starting this endeavour, Igloo Insure understood that there is a ripe opportunity to build a claims processor that reduces human error and manual inefficiencies.
With manual processing, customers who submit an emergency claim in the middle of the night can only prompt the operations team to process their claims during the following working day. Such incidents traditionally take time. With machines working 24/7, customers are able to get responses much faster and around the clock.
Such is the case for transit insurance that typically yields a high volume of low-value claims wherein manually assessing claims is clearly not an efficient method. This has created market opportunities for insurers to instead process claims in an automated manner and without lag.
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Automated claims are also much more consistent in terms of decision-making. Unlike purely human systems, automated claims processing system work round the clock and do not tire after processing thousands of claims.
The average human error rate is 5% for a standard task and increases as the task becomes more complex, requiring a larger variety of data to make correct and informed decisions. As such, improvements in accuracy will have a more significant impact the more complex the claim becomes. This is why Igloo Insure is focused on building smarter AI solutions that overcome these challenges.
As Igloo Insure continues building up more logic modules, it also becomes increasingly easier to scale across new products as they decide which assortment of modules would best fit the needs of a product, further extending the capabilities of the claimbot technology.
Big Data powers dynamic pricing and leads to fairer insurance premiums
Igloo’s use of big data also enables it to offer personalised, and ultimately fairer premiums based on behavioural data. AI-assisted mechanisms enable premium pricing to be dynamic, as opposed to fixed premiums typically offered in other insurance products.
In motor insurance, Igloo’s Usage-Based insurance (UBI) product collects data to measure driver behaviour. This data is collected, aggregated, and assessed through a plug-and-play IoT device installed in your car that analyses your driving on five crucial factors, namely distance, speed, journey duration, time of day, and areas driven – ultimately rewarding safer drivers with lower premiums.
The insurance product transforms the experience by completely digitising the consumer’s journey as everything can be done exclusively through a mobile application — from purchasing the product, monitoring the vehicle usage, calculating premiums, to making claims.
A similar holistic approach is applied in Igloo’s other products. For insurance covering e-commerce products such as product liability insurance, “less risky” merchants may be allowed lower premiums based on several key factors such as assessment-based claims history as well as a product category.
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On the other hand, for scenarios related to e-commerce, charging all online sellers for product liability insurance at the same rates is not a fair model. The nature of e-commerce is not consistent across all sellers and this certainly affects the rate at which they make claims. Some products are less likely to be damaged but the sellers are losing out as they are paying a higher rate for no fault of theirs.
That’s where Igloo Insure’s AI-based dynamic pricing kicks in, emboldened by a technology that can estimate risk profile and give better rates. The whole objective is to give sellers a more competitive rate that is more aligned with their risk profile.
Features such as dynamic pricing and claim automation are just two examples of how Igloo is using technology and data to generate product innovations. With all of this and more, Igloo is committed to making insurance products better using data and technology and at the same time, embedding these products in places and platforms that benefit consumers most.
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This article is produced by the e27 team in partnership with Igloo Insure.
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