Gone are the days when buying insurance was a complicated task. With the advent of newer technologies, insurance, one of the oldest businesses in the world, has assured a bright future for itself and opened up opportunities for several start-ups. Among these is Mumbai-based AskArvi, a fintech company that leverages new capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to fix the flaws that are prevalent in the Indian insurance industry. AskArvi intelligently uses the attribute of “mobile chat” based medium to understand the customers’ needs and recommends them a matching product. By building a friendly Virtual Insurance Assistant, it reaches out to the customers by automating their pre and post sales experience. The vision of the start-up is to make insurance agents completely redundant in a few years’ time. “Our solution breaks down the complexities of insurance and helps customers understand its intricacies in the simplest way possible.Furthermore, they improve the purchase experience of customers by directing them to the relevant insurance plan by using an intelligence layer with the help of AI as well as helping users through the sales process via mobile chat feature,” says Sushant Reddy, co-founder & CEO, AskArvi. For instance, an AskArvi customer can buy a motor insurance plan relevant to her needs in just a few seconds. The customer is required to upload her vehicle’s photo with its registration number and she will be directed to see, compare and policy purchase options. AskArvi currently focuses on serving the health, international travel, bike and car insurances. The start-up has helped around 25,000 customers buy health and travel insurance so far and went commercially live in January 2018, partnering with 16 insurance companies including Bajaj Allianz, HDFC Ergo, Apollo Munich, Reliance, Aditya Birla and others. The start-up is innovating on new products that leverage on latest technologies such as Blockchain and microinsurance. Also, AskArvi has evolved the system using proprietary services to embed voice-based assistance, natural language processing, computer vision, using cloud infrastructure services such as AWS. In September 2017, AskArvi raised an early stage funding from a group of American angel investors. In just two months of operations, it has managed to collect a premium of about Rs 2,50,000. “We are looking to close another round of funding in the next six months and expand to a team size of 20. Also, we are expecting to make a revenue of Rs 6 lakh by the end of the year by selling around 6000 policies,” he says. Get live Stock Prices from BSE and NSE and latest NAV, portfolio of Mutual Funds, calculate your tax by Income Tax Calculator, know market’s Top Gainers, Top Losers & Best Equity Funds. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Car insurers Metromile and Zubine are using sensors and automated accident reports to measure driver quality and miles driven, then using that data to calculate risk. The company is also working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on a program called “Smart Driving,” which will use cameras in cars to monitor driving behavior for signs of safety hazards. Data intensive analysis is increasing insurtech's competitiveness in an evolving car insurance market place. Cars must be insured by law. However, they are stationary for 95% of their lifetime, meaning the spare capacity is vast. The firms allow for changing trends in the use of vehicles, insuring consumers efficiently with more value.