Bdeo’s VILAs: Why it is necessary to establish levels of automation within claims handling aided by Visual Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is no longer something from the future, taken out of a sci-fi film or book. It is now a reality, integrated into many of today’s business processes. From everyday things like Spotify song recommendations and Netflix popping up with a suggestion, to devices like Alexa and Siri, with which we can communicate through voice recognition, more and more companies are realizing the need to implement these solutions into their processes in order to achieve better results. Among these solutions are those which have Visual Intelligence at their core.

The Visual Intelligence Revolution

The fashion industry was one of the first to integrate this type of technology into its processes. For example, the famous Smart Mirror, and Wide Eyes technologies which let users get fashion recommendations similar to a photo they upload, each allow brands to increase their sales by offering products similar to those their customers are looking for. 

The fashion industry, however, is not the only one to be implementing Visual Intelligence into it’s day-to-day operations. The insurance industry is also taking it on board, optimizing many of its most repetitive processes through automation. This is leading to an improved service to policyholders and higher profit margins. This is a true revolution.

What are automation levels?

The insurance industry is undergoing a digital transformation process that aims to optimize a large part of its processes through automation. To achieve this goal, Artificial Intelligence—and specifically Visual Intelligence—has become one of the cornerstones of the sector. Through these solutions, processes such as underwriting and claims handling become much more agile, providing faster solutions to policyholders.

As the extent to which these processes are automated increases, different levels of automation are established in order to define standards among a wide range of options, from full human control of the process to full digital control; the latter having already been implemented in other industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, and self-driving. 

Let's take a closer look at this last point. Six levels of automation have been established as standards, from level 0, where there is no automation at all, to the maximum, level 5, which details full automation of driving. Among the defining values are the different degrees of driving aids, such as cruise control, or more specific resources such as ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems). 

As we can see, the levels of automation are fundamental in order to establish standards by which to define the level of different companies’ operations. The insurance industry cannot be left without these standards.

Why it is important to establish standard levels in the insurance industry

Now that we know the importance of Visual Intelligence solutions in the insurance industry and we have seen what the Levels of Automation (LoAs) are, it is crucial to consider the importance of establishing a VILA (Visual Intelligence Level of Automation) in the insurance industry as well. In order to do so, we have identified two reasons why we—at Bdeo—believe that it is essential to define VILAs for the sector:

1. We are now at a time when fraud is one of the main problems for insurers. This creates a lack of trust between all the parties involved in the industry, from the policyholders to the companies themselves, appraisers, etc. In short, it brings about widespread distrust that damages the entire insurance sector.

2. There is a multitude of suppliers, making it almost impossible to standardize levels of automation across the industry. It is therefore extremely difficult to determine the extent of each company’s automation. For instance, does an insurer with automated evidence collection for a claim have a higher degree of automation than an insurer with automated policy valuation? Today, it is impossible to say. 

This is why establishing VILAs in order to standardize the levels of automation in the industry is now a top priority. This will make it possible to establish levels so that companies can be listed in their respective value, with a better definition of where they are today and to what extent they wish to take their own digital transformation processes.

The 4 VILAs (Visual Intelligence Levels of Automation) in the insurance sector

We can establish four levels of automation in the insurance sector, with 1 being the least automated—and therefore most manual—and 4 being the most automated, with least human intervention.

Now it's your turn to place your company in the corresponding automation level, where are you?