Extended Reality (XR) – Seizing the opportunity in Insurance

We ask Vikram Singh, our AVP, Insurance Practice Head for his views.

Vikram, can you provide a quick view on why XR is becoming a focus point?

The impact of insurance is increasingly significant and highly disruptive due to operational processes. Today we are seeing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), collectively known as Extended Reality (XR), increasingly leveraged to provide solutions that address current issues. AR & VR are emerging & revolutionary technologies that are making inroads into conversations at all levels of technology leadership. Both AR and VR have the potential to disrupt the way insurance carriers operate their business.

They are a distinct set of technologies that provide a more inclusive, visually rich channel that insurance companies can help businesses to deliver a better customer experience. When combined with real-time or “dynamic” personalization using complex event processing that delivers contextual and relevant information in a timely manner there is an exponential increase in decision making to solve a problem; an increasingly critical aspect of delivering a better, differentiated experience

Extended reality has the potential to enable remote but personalized risk assessments in a cost-effective way that can help identify insurance coverage requirements, impact premiums, and result in reduced loss ratios.

Can you give more insights into how XR is disrupting?

The post-pandemic business landscape has changed the way customers are interacting with insurers. Insurance carriers are having to find new ways of operating their businesses; both AR & VR have the potential to play a significant part in this.

• AR is helpful in predicting & mitigating risks either before they happen or as they happen for both while VR helps in preparing zero-risk models.
• Insurers can use AR to help customers identify and avoid risk in real-time; to educate consumers and incentivize less risky behavior.
• VR has the potential to simulate workplace environments, to highlight the risks and hazards that could be resulting in a reduced number of claims.

Can you provide further examples of where XR can be used?

There are already AR & VR use cases within the Insurance Industry e.g.:

• Australia's National Roads and Motorists' Association Insurance and the US's Liberty Mutual Insurance are using technology for car crash and breakdown simulations
• Zurich Insurance is leveraging technology to enhance staff training
• AXA Insurance is using VR for advertising

To sum up, how do you see this exciting technology developing?

The demand for virtual experience is growing for insurance carriers and their customers. Due to this, there is an uplift in the investment and subsequent use of technology such as XR that focuses on the recreation of a real-world environment for use in communication, learning, transacting, and consuming virtually.

XR merges the real and the virtual worlds to enable businesses to create hyper-personalized experiences for employees, partners, and customers. The result will be a plethora of new computing experiences that drive increased productivity in the insurance industry resulting in improved effectiveness and exciting new business opportunities.

The technology has already evolved from pilot projects with modest growth to sustainable business models, market maturity, and global availability. The technical aspects of AR and VR will merge into a mixed reality feature set, with AR maintaining a larger market share due to relevance to the core of its business activities such as risk assessments, underwriting, claims, etc.

Also Read

Coforge gears up for Metaverse and Web3 revolution with new Center of Excellence

Source

1. Novarica – Report on Augmented and Virtual Reality
2. Gartner – Report on Exploring Augmented reality for business and consumer 
3. Forbes – Report on biggest virtual and augmented reality trends in 2020
4. IIR – Impact of AR & VR on the insurance industry