Founder and CEO of groundbreaking new life-insurance company iCover, Hari Srinivasan, understands just how frustrating getting life insurance traditionally has been. Determined to solve this problem for American consumers, he leveraged his more than two decades of experience in the InsurTech industry to create a simple, fast, and effective process for obtaining life insurance.
TechNational sat down with Srinivasan to talk about the technology that powers his life insurance revolution.
Traditional life insurance applications are known for being lengthy and complex. How does iCover's AI-powered approach reduce the application time to 5 minutes?
Our proprietary AI and deep-learning algorithms assess the customer’s risk as they progress through the online journey. Our straight-through process allows customers to get an offer for life insurance in only five minutes.
Other companies have attempted to create accelerated underwriting programs, but in my experience, only approximately 35 percent of consumers qualify. In contrast, our platform rates and prices almost every customer, helping them gain access to products that fit their budget and risk profile.
Granted, our algorithms access the same industry-standard third-party data as other underwriting tools. (We do not use information from social media or data related to race, religion, employment, location, or buying habits.) Yet, our system leverages insights from machine learning to assess this data differently than our competitors. As a result, about 80 percent of customers receive an instant offer.
iCover is recognized for its "Best Life Insurance Buying Experience." Can you elaborate on how AI and algorithmic underwriting contribute to this experience?
Today’s customers expect and deserve a fast, simple online process for obtaining life insurance. That’s why we designed our disclosure process in accordance with best practices for surveys and polling.
Called QUI (pronounced q-eee), our approach streamlines the questions prospective customers are asked to answer. There are no follow-up or “reflexive” questions, which annoy people and incentivize them to omit important information. Instead, when a consumer discloses a medical condition, the system automatically presents them with no more than five answer options indicating the severity of the condition. Machine learning allowed us to arrive at these key elements in the answer options.
Due to our AI-based system, our users also don’t need to submit to having blood, urine, or other tests taken. This commonly happens in the traditional life insurance underwriting process and also slows everything down.
Beyond speed, what other benefits does iCover offer consumers seeking life insurance?
Another common problem with traditional life insurance is that when customers finally receive an offer, the premiums can be too expensive. A benefit of our system is that it automatically shows customers their full range of options. While they might not be able to purchase the ideal level of coverage, they will get substantial peace of mind from securing the level of coverage they can afford.
