Harnessing ChatGPT in marine insurance

Now recognised as the fastest-growing application in history, ChatGPT reached an incredible milestone of 100 million monthly active users at the beginning of 2023.

The artificial intelligence (AI) tool took only five days to reach one million users. To put this into perspective, it took Twitter two years to reach the same figure.

We are witnessing the earliest days of a massively disruptive technology and marine insurers are only just beginning to explore its potential.

Key Challenge

The key challenge marine insurers face with ChatGPT implementation is its generalised nature. The language model is trained on 175 billion data points, but the jargon of marine insurance would only make up the tiniest fraction of the whole.

This means that ChatGPT is (at present) relatively untrained in the language of marine insurance. The natural language processing (NLP) interpretation of a typical query can be inaccurate unless the user makes the additional effort of providing contextual information to the tool. As BCG points out, precision requirements in insurance applications are very high and fault tolerance is very low.

With such high precision requirements, algorithms need to be trained on internal and contextual data before being trusted to support business decision-making or answer customer queries unsupervised.

Until that happens, marine insurers should continue to take a “human in the loop” approach to train and supervise the tool.

One solution is to combine the generalised AI model with your organisation’s domain-specific models trained on internal data. Roi Amir, CEO of Sprout.ai, noted that most AI models are built to solve very specific problems, but ChatGPT’s difference lies with its generalised model.

“What I think we will see is many companies using it as their baseline model and adding layers of intelligence and specificity for their individual domains. It will jumpstart a lot of things because it enables you to start from a much better level of abstraction”, he said.

Use Cases In Marine Insurance

ChatGPT can be applied in marine insurance in various ways to enhance customer service, streamline processes, and improve efficiency.

It is important to note that in every case, the technology is used to “assist”, “advise”, “speed up” or “enhance” a human process rather than taking over through full automation. Following are the main potential uses:

> Customer support: ChatGPT can serve as a virtual assistant to provide immediate and personalised assistance to marine insurance customers. It can answer frequently asked questions, guide customers through the claims process, explain policy details and help with policy renewals. This reduces the need for manual intervention and improves the overall customer experience. BCG sees customer service as the area of highest potential, writing: “ChatGPT will have a massive impact on operations and customer centre effectivess that, for a period of two to three years, will likely see their productivity double or even triple.”

> Claims processing: The technology can speed up the initial stages of claims processing by interacting with customers to gather relevant information about an incident. It can collect details such as the nature of the claim, damages incurred and any supporting documentation. This information should then be passed on to human claims adjusters for further evaluation and supervision with a “human-in-the-loop” approach.

> Risk assessment: Language models like ChatGPT can analyse marine insurance policy documents and extract key information such as vessel details, cargo types and coverage limits. By automating this process, underwriters can efficiently assess risks, determine appropriate premiums and identify any potential discrepancies or risks that need further investigation.

> Policy recommendation: ChatGPT can assist insurance agents or brokers in recommending suitable marine insurance policies based on the specific needs and requirements of customers. It can ask targeted questions to understand the nature of the cargo, vessel specifications, trade routes and other relevant factors, and then provide tailored policy options and coverage recommendations.

> Regulatory compliance: ChatGPT can assist in ensuring compliance by providing accurate and up-to-date information on applicable laws, regulations and industry standards. It can help insurance professionals stay informed about compliance requirements and provide guidance on fulfilling regulatory obligations.

> Risk mitigation and loss prevention: ChatGPT can offer guidance and best practices to vessel owners, operators and shippers to reduce the likelihood of marine incidents and losses. It can provide information on safety protocols, navigation guidelines, maintenance practices and cargo handling procedures.

Adoption Is On The Individual

What makes ChatGPT different to other disruptive technologies is its accessibility. Usually, the task of adopting new business software lies with decision-makers in your organisation such as the CTO or the IT team, who will eventually push the new tech to business users with a top-down approach.

But ChatGPT is on the individual. There’s no need to wait for someone in the leadership team to give you the green light to experiment with the tech or work out how the tool’s supercharged NLP abilities can enhance your effectiveness. As with any change, ChatGPT adoption will come down to having the right mindset. No doubt there will be individuals in your team who would prefer to pretend the technology doesn’t exist or shrug it off as a fad. Others will use it sparingly but only scratch the surface of its capabilities. Hopefully, there will be one or two people in your team with the curiosity and willingness to wholeheartedly embrace this disruptor and experiment with different ways it can be applied to their day-to-day tasks.

If you are curious about exploring ChatGPT’s potential, here are some tips for getting started:

1. Recognise it’s on you. Don’t wait to be told how to use ChatGPT. This technology is spreading so fast because it’s highly accessible, easy for non-technical people to interact with, and free (for now).

2. Experiment. Consider the workload you need to complete by the end of the week. Whether it’s filling out spreadsheets, communicating with colleagues, or answering customer queries, experiment with using ChatGPT to become more effective and efficient at each task.

3. Share successes. Don’t keep your ChatGPT successes and failures to yourself. Discuss your experiments with your team and let others know where the technology can make a real difference. Consider sharing success at an industry level to help marine insurance as a whole.

4. Become a prompt engineer. In the future, every individual who interacts with AI will need some level of proficiency in prompt engineering. This means knowing how to develop, refine and optimise text prompts to get the best-possible outcome from AI.