In The Press

Sharing Economy – 2020

01.02.2020

Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is here to stay in 2020 and was one of the fastest growing business trends of the last decade, although at this point in time it’s impossible to know the actual size of the sharing economy because many of the companies are private and don’t publish their full business results.

But to bring some focus on to value you only have to look at recent IPOs and the big players with their public valuations such as AirBNB, Upwork, Uber and the like.

So just what is the Sharing Economy? How does it look at the start of 2020?

In its simplest form it is swapping goods and services between two or more parties. This simple economic form has then been put on steroids by the inclusion of technology and cheap computing power. This new form of economic powerhouse will grow and evolve as both tech changes and more people have access to the internet globally.

Technology has allowed new forms of shared marketplace, collaborative platforms and peer-to-peer applications to be built. Today the ability to build a large global community has never been easier and the network of different communities and shared interests can power these new companies to success.

The sharing economy also has many other names and parts within its economic system such as Peer-to-Peer and Freelance/Gig workers and these terms are used interchangeably.

Technology has given these companies the ability to operate globally and vey efficiently. The companies are not loaded down with inventory and this helps these share-based businesses run lean. These efficiencies then allow these brands to pass-through value to their customers and their supply chain partners.

This is bringing challenges to existing industries and also their traditional support systems such as insurance. These support industries have lagged behind in the past decade but change is also coming faster to the whole network.

Transportation; Consumer Goods; Professional Services; Health Care these are the first of many areas where the sharing economy has affected their established business plans. Financial services, such as payment processes, are also being challenged to respond and new services are pouring into this once stable area which was controlled by the banks, no more.

Companies such as Uber, Ola, Lyft, eBay, Etsy, Rent the Runway, Fivrr, Upwork, People per Hour, Taskrabbit, Doctor on Demand all have million and billion dollar valuations and are growing fast. This was the result of the 2010 to 2019 decade….2020 onwards we will see these companies exploit their strong positions and changes in demographics.

What Is Next for the Sharing Economy in 2020?

More Technology and more disruption. But the difference will be that the sharing economy process will be assumed into the existing channels and the ways of doing business. Companies that don’t adapt will disappear and new ones will move into existing industries at a new faster pace.

In The Press

The Aim of AI in Insurance

11.04.2019

AI

We are working with many clients and platforms to provide insurance and insurance services and we have noticed a sea change in the last few months. This sea change is that AI is coming. AI became generally available in the insurance industry around 4 years ago (2015) with the funding of a few Insurtechs and the likes of IBM trying to gather data into their Watson AI engine. The big promise is that it will be used to improve the process of dealing with claims and placing insurance and pricing.

Tasks such as measuring the ground floor distance to the surrounding ground level for flood, looking at the pitch of the roof of a building, answering questions through a bot, looking at car dealerships for hailstone risks, determining damage to cars and phones via computer vision or viewing crop growth via satellite images, These are all things that AI can do – AI is not one thing, it is many things.

At MIC Global we have a vision for our AI process and use of AI and Machine Learning is central to this. These technologies will power our vision. The vision is to turn the human effort around – the processes starts with our customers and ends with customer satisfaction.

Customers enter data – take pictures, answer questions, upload documents, integration with Apps. This data is then used in the claims or policy process to speed up and give accurate results.

The AI processes the data, aligns the results, completing a recommendation, gaining approval, sending a policy or closing the claim.

This is all based on zero human processing by MIC Global. This is the vision, speed, accuracy and transparency.

Data Entry; AI Processing; No humans involved

Each product we develop will have a profile of Easy Customer Data Input; AI processing; Zero human input for MI.

Why is this important?

Our insurance products are integrated into our client platforms and operations. Because our insurance products back client service operations it’s essential that our business can scale through tech. Our vision fully supports our clients growth ambitions by limiting the impact of our products and services on their processes, whilst delivering essential insurance cover for their customers.

At MIC Global we are focused on changing the way business insurance is developed and processed. We are insurance with AI built in, API. We are in the forefront of that change; developing policies by the season, job, by the hour, by the day and by the Km, thus fitting our model to that of the platforms and the way small and micro businesses see risk. We are unbundling business policies so that the cover offered fits with peoples and business needs or the actual job or process being undertaken. Making Business Insurance transactional.

In The Press

Get Back Fast – Have a Plan!

08.13.2019

Cyber Security

Over two years on from NotPetya, ransomware remains a major threat to organisations which in some instances are losing millions after falling victim to attacks.

What was NotPetya? Basically it was a series of powerful cyberattacks using the Petya malware and began on 27 June 2017. It quickly swamped websites of Ukrainian organizations, including banks, ministries, newspapers and electricity firms. Similar infections were reported in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

But despite the damage done by NotPetya and WannaCry before it (May 2017), there are still fears that the world isn’t prepared for the impact of another global ransomware outbreak.

The report by the Cyber Risk Management (CyRiM) project — a collaborative partnership including Lloyd’s of London, the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and others — uses a theoretical catastrophic ransomware attack to model the broader impact.

The simulation is as follows and sounds very scary.

The malware is potent, once one employee runs the ransomware , it’s enough to spread the file-locking malware around the network, with a demand of $700 in cryptocurrency on each machine.
Around 30 million devices at organisations around the globe are locked in just 24 hours.
Organisations of all sizes in all sectors unable to perform day-to-day operations.
Some organisations opt to pay ransoms — including healthcare companies, due to the need to keep life-saving equipment online.
Other firms opt to replace devices instead of paying criminals — this also costs money, estimated cost at $350 per device.
Predictions of $193bn around the world as a result of cyber incident response, damage control and mitigation, business interruption, lost revenue, and reduced productivity.

Unlikely? Maybe but can you say for sure. Are you even ready? Can you say that your data recovery process is strong?

With the Moller Maersk attack the cyberattack was so bad that it just didn’t seem possible that something so destructive could have happened so quickly according to people involved.

“I remember that morning – laptops were sporadically restarting and it didn’t appear to be a cyberattack at the time but very quickly the true impact became apparent,” said Lewis Woodcock, head of cybersecurity compliance at Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping firm.

“The severity for me was really taken in when walking through the offices and seeing banks and banks of screens, all black. There was a moment of disbelief, initially, at the sheer ferocity and the speed and scale of the attack and the impact it had.”

The company was one of the most badly hit of those caught in NotPetya, with almost 50,000 infected endpoints and thousands of applications and servers across 600 sites in 130 countries.

Maersk had to balance the need to continue operating – despite the lack of IT – and recovering and rebuilding networks. In many cases, it was a manual process that took days and what was described at the time as a “serious business interruption” is estimated to have cost Maersk up to $300m in losses.

It gets worse….

The last decade has seen significant growth in subscription-based services such as “SaaS” whereby vendors provide customers with the ability to rent or subscribe access to services. This has also transferred into the criminal worlds too.

Given the high demand for RansomWare in this day and age, creative cyber-criminal entrepreneurs followed this subscription based industry trend to and have created RansomWare As A Service (RaaS) to ease the burden (poor things) of cyber attackers having to develop their own attacks.

Would you be able to cope with data recovery?

Do you have a data recovery plan?

While protecting networks and critical systems is the ultimate and is all well and good, a recovery plan must be in place. Failure to do so means that really you are only 50% ready.

A significant part of a recovery plan is that ability to really understand the core business processes and know everything about the systems and applications which run the operation.

Protect Secure and Recover – crucially in that order.

How to start?

A good place to start is here, the IRMI – International Risk Management Institute, Inc.

A cyber-incident response plan should be developed as part of a larger business continuity plan, which may include other plans and procedures for ensuring minimal impact to business functions (e.g., disaster recovery plans and crisis communication plans). Data recovery activities encompass a tactical recovery phase and a strategic recovery phase.

In The Press

Insurance Penetration

08.05.2019

Insurance Industry Natural Hazards

Why is insurance penetration important? The recent intense Tropical Cyclone Idai, one of the worst tropical cyclones on record to affect Africa and the Southern Hemisphere, is a good case to look at.

This storm was long-lived and caused catastrophic damage in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Malawi, leaving more than 1,200 people dead and thousands more missing.

Cyclone Idai made landfall in Mozambique March 14 and 15, 2019 as a Category 2 storm. Then, a few weeks after, Cyclone Kenneth came ashore in northern Mozambique April 25, 2019, with hurricane-force winds and heavy rains. The storm arrived only six weeks after Cyclone Idai devastated a broad area of the country about 600 miles south of Cyclone Kenneth’s impact zone

The basic facts of the Cyclone Idai are:

Highest wind speed: 127 mph
Date: March 4, 2019 – March 21, 2019
Dates: Mar 4, 2019 – Mar 21, 2019
Damage: ≥ $2 billion (2019 USD); The cyclone caused overall losses in Mozambique and neighboring countries of $2 billion. The loss in Mozambique is equivalent to about one-tenth of the country’s gross domestic product.

However almost nothing was insured, so very few of the people affected were able to obtain prompt financial assistance for the loss of their belongings property and life.

Insurance provides a critical safety net for households, preventing them from falling into poverty by avoiding the damaging costs of emergencies such as the ones being felt from the above cyclones.

Specifically the new low cost microinsurance schemes are designed to grow insurance programs and are aimed at helping low-income people avoiding difficult, often devastating risk coping measures following such issues. This can be putting children to work, eating less food, or selling productive assets. All these have long terms impact on peoples growth.

Increasing insurance penetration promotes access to vital services, including health and agricultural services, and can promote healthier and more productive decisions.

How is insurance penetration measured? Penetration rate indicates the level of development of insurance sector in a country. Penetration rate is measured as the ratio of premium underwritten in a particular year to the GDP.

Looking at the overall figures for insurance penetration. In Emerging Asia, property insurance penetration is very low at just 1.1% – only slightly above the figures for sub-Saharan Africa. In India, the Philippines and Indonesia, insurance penetration is a feeble 0.5–0.6%. Compared to Asia’s developed countries with an average insurance penetration level of 2.4% – which is similar to western Europe – the US shows an insurance penetration of 3.3%.

These low levels of insurance penetration are particularly problematic in African and Asian countries, as many of them are exceedingly prone to natural catastrophes.

Apart from the humanitarian tragedies with high numbers of casualties, property losses after natural catastrophes invariably cause serious economic setbacks.

Studies have proven that high insurance penetration significantly reduces or even balances out these negative effects. The positive economic effect of risk transfer is thus particularly strong in emerging economies.

Social programs and technology is here now to support the delivery of microinsurance and new insurance programs to these countries. We are developing parametric solutions and programmes to support this backed up with AI and Machine Learning tech.

In The Press

Pre-money Valuations

08.03.2019

Insurance Industry

I was at an investor pitch meeting the other day and was asked about our valuation. How to justify a X multiple of our revenue. Truth is we are just starting to get revenue from some parts of the business, we have booked revenue from one area, but these is so much more potential. At the time I did not have a good answer. I was thinking its not about revenue at this point. This time next year it will be, but today the pipes are just turning on. So now I have given it some thought and would have a better answer.

I thought I would pass on my thoughts and also thank John Ason’s web site for being very helpful, professional and clear.

Getting pre money valuations

The valuation is probably the most difficult and even emotional aspect for us, the founders of a company. We have invested a lot of money and time already. So, on the one hand, we want the highest possible pre money valuations as proof of the concept, our investment and reward for our hard work. And then on the other hand, we also know high pre-money valuations can kill any possibility of getting funding. This was running through my mind when I was asked the question in our pitch meeting!

For pre-revenue elements of the company there is no simple way to mathematically derive a present money value, today we only have revenue from parts of our business currently. We are working hard on revenue across all elements and we are close to this point now, this is as at Aug 2019.

So how does an early stage investor arrive at pre money valuations that works for them?

A suggestion is to first, analyse our revenue projections, we can send these to you. This will provide you, the investor, with some insight into the direction of the business and business model and maybe some fun and tears. I would say we are in a very exciting area, there are very few digital insurers trying to solve for being global with high volume low value policies. Automation of insurance is highly efficient.

Second, is for you to construct your own private revenue projections; you can research our markets and sectors and review our model and likely revenue from similar companies. This can include “ancillary” businesses or using other revenue models. To invest in an insurtech I believe you need to know a bit about the sector. It’s highly regulated. If these revenue projections provide you with a 10 bagger (i.e. 10 times the investment) then we should be a candidate for consideration of an investment. We believe we hit this model.

Trying to calculate a value for a start-up is difficult to impossible, so asking about a multiple and me saying we are at a 10 times or 20 times or 40 times revenue multiple at todays revenue is not the right question or answer at this stage. This process attempts to manage the risk of investing along with the goals and wants of the founders. Bringing together a good partnership.

First, we the company, must demonstrate that we have potential of at least a ten bagger. Second, a standard non-emotional formula is applied based on amount of funding obtained to derive the ownership. We can work with investors on this model, I think any startup and investor can.

Thanks for reading – I hope this was helpful – I feel better able to answer this question now at least!

What is a 10 Bagger?

A 10 bagger is a stock or company that increases in value by at least 10 times its purchase price, or by at least 900%. The term 10 bagger was coined by legendary fund manager Peter Lynch in his best-selling book, “One Up on Wall Street.”

Any company that appreciates ten-fold from the date an investor initially purchased it can be referred to as a 10 bagger. Although such investments are a rarity on Wall Street, more are found from early stage start-ups and early revenue companies.

In The Press

Insurance and the Sharing Economy

07.09.2019

Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is growing up fast, message is that the growth will reach or surpass PwC’s projections which show that five key sharing sectors — travel, car sharing, finance, staffing, and music and video streaming — have the potential to increase global revenues from roughly $15 billion in 2015 to around $335 billion by 2025. Massive growth.

Linked to this we are seeing companies going from start-up to unicorn in just a few years. This is unmatched in history.

What does this mean for the insurance industry? The sharing economy is breaking down the business model of insurance that is very well established. the new sharing economy is responsive, customer focused, data driven, short term, growth focused, multi relationship and tech based. Traditional insurance in nearly the polar opposite of this.

To be responsive and to meet the challenges for both the platform users and the providers there needs to be a new type of insurance company. One that is truly digital and built based on paying claims rather than processing policies. For insurance to be relevant to this new business model the digital insurer needs to be there when the claim is to be paid. This is trust.

Insurance is all about trust but somehow this has been eroded over the decades and lost in the depth of the contract small print and the layers of complexity. Customers need to know that the claim will be paid. The platform would need to know the claim would be paid. The digital insurer needs to understand how to deal with high-volume short-term policies and fast claims payment. If the insurer can do this then trust will be earned back. It’s all online, simple, clear, transparent processing of policies and claims.

GiG Work. As of 2014, 34% of the US Labor force, or between 54 and 68 million people, is comprised of independent workers. These workers are not all GiG workers but the numbers are growing an this is is being driven by the sharing economy and the gig economy.

GiG work is expected to grow to 40% by the year 2020 (Freelancer’s Union, 2014). On-demand platforms such as AirBnB, Uber, TaskRabbit, and Upwork have played an enormous role in growing the independent labor force. While platform workers currently account for only about 15% of the independent labor force (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016), the rise of the Sharing Economy platforms have significantly shifted mindsets about the nature of independent work, making supporting one’s self independently increasingly appealing and appear more feasible.

By empowering freelancers and other independent workers to connect with businesses and buyers of their services at a scale that has never before been possible, these platforms are inspiring an unprecedented number of workers to flee the constraints of the traditional workplaces in favor of more autonomy and flexibility in their work–in the process helping to create an entirely new kind of labor force, the Gig Economy. This is the driving force behind the sharing economy and with that the force that will re-shape the insurance industry.

Here at MIC Global we understand these forces and they are driving our company forward. We believe in the new economies and are building process, services and policies to fit into the new business models of today and the future.

The speed, reach and data that the new platforms operate on is driving change. Put simply, they get global fast and consume more data than traditional business. The insurance industry needs to respond equally to these challenges and build new products and services to meet these clients needs. The new type of insurer needs to be responsive, innovative and yet remain focused on underwriting the risk. Data is the key to this, however having the data is one thing successfully applying it to new insurance products is another. Having 1 million customers per day on hourly variable contracts is totally different to 1 million annual policies. The data velocity alone is a huge item to grasp.

Interested to know more? we have curated 3 great reports that are focused on the gig and sharing economy together with insurance. These reports are independent and cover the areas in depth.

Sharing economy insurance report AXA XL

Sharing economy business report PwC

Gig economy insurance report Cake & Arrow

At MIC Global we are focused on changing the way business insurance is developed and processed. We are digital insurance. We are in the forefront of change; developing policies by the season, job, by the hour, by the day and by the Km, thus fitting our model to that of the platforms and the way small and micro businesses see risk. We are unbundling business policies so that the cover offered fits with peoples and business needs or the actual job or process being undertaken. Making Business Insurance transactional and available.

In The Press

Microinsurance by MIC Global

07.02.2019

Micro Insurance

The generally accepted definition of microinsurance is the protection of low-income people (those living on between approximately $1 and $4 per day) against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payment proportionate to the likelihood and cost of the risks involved

This definition seems to focus on one Target Market – the low income peoples of the world. This target market does not typically buy insurance and are generally ignored by main-stream insurance companies.

Here at MIC Global we do not really like this definition, why pick on a population with a particular insurance sector?

We prefer a wider more inclusive definition of microinsurance, one that allows products to be developed, sold globally, works in the new sharing economy and includes solutions for many of the issues surrounding selling, distributing and managing microinsurance policies and schemes. Products that cover all populations based on their specific needs.

Why I started MIC – Harry Croydon, CoFounder, President and COO

The problem with the accepted definition for microinsurance is that it is exactly the same as one might apply for regular insurance except its aimed at low income people. I.e. Insurance is the protection of people/businesses against specific perils in exchange for regular premium payment proportionate to the likelihood and cost of the risks involved

I guess the general insurance industry could not bring itself to call it Low Income Insurance, like they do for High Net Worth Insurance so the term microinsurance was adopted.

Anyway we are getting away from the point.

Microinsurance has many challenges and these challenges are not just issues surrounding products for low income families. Just like the definition for microinsurance is the same for any insurance, so are the challenges for any insurance product when faced with high volume sales and policies, new business models like the sharing economy and platform businesses.

Today’s insurance industry is not very well geared up to deal with high volume sales and claims. The nearest you get to high volume is car insurance and in terms of microinsurance, these volumes are very small.

Here at MIC Global we see that the investment of resources needed to solve the challenges of microinsurance can be used globally for insurance policies that are simply small, micro. That can be used by everyone. Policies that match user and policy.

Typically insurance policies are complex and expensive. Insurance companies must like these as they sell millions of $$ of them each year.

We look at insurance the other way. We think of making insurance simple, event driven and the policy value small. Covering events that might last for a journey, a purchase, a short period, a job etc, hopefully you get the point – rather than buying for a year or month etc, cover the event instead.

Simple. Tech Based. High Volume. Embedded. Transactional.

Simple

Insurance policies are generally complicated – many insurance TV adverts point this out, focusing on saving money, making the process simple but hiding the complexity since people tend not to read ‘small print’. The industry has this issue in its DNA. They are contractual documents after all.

Microinsurance policies do not need to be complicated, times needs to be invested to simplify the whole process ensuring that policies are fully incorporated through the process – marketing, quoting, buying, renewal and on through to a claim.

Tech Based

Leverage in the tech in your phone or on your PC to good effect. Linking the process such that the customer journey is well thought through and connected, end to end, right though the customer journey and the life of the policy. Processes are built with APIs and integration at the core of the tech to allow

High Volume

Insurance companies generally do not like high volumes of anything – especially claims. They simply are not geared up to deal with high volumes of customer contact for sales, queries, claims and complaints. They typically pass these tasks to others – Sales via aggregators or agents and brokers – Claims are passed to Third Party Administrators, specialist claims companies – Complaints are pushed overseas to keep costs down. Insurers and brokers split the process across many companies and struggle to have a complete view of the customer apart from financial performance and product based metrics.

To manage high volume required by microinsurance means owning and investing in the process and managing the transaction end to end. Entering data once and then straight through processing along the entire journey. This has the advantage that lots of data is collected and allows for better data usage and management which leads to improved process, more customer engagement and pricing.

Embedded

Rather than buying policies for Cars, Gadgets, Home etc more and more insurance will be embedded in the process and by your use the benefits of the insurance will be passed on to you. Home security and Home help devices could come with home insurance, electric cycles would be insured against damage and theft, App that allow you to use the cycles could have insurance added per KM and variable depending on if you are in the local park or on a busy road. IoT devices for crops could come with insurance that monitors the crop and the rate varied depending upon the actions of the farmer and the weather.

Transactional

Insurance does not have to be on an annual basis. The current process is to some extent driven by the inability for insurers to manage volume and customer engagement, it’s cheaper and easier to manage once per year rather than 12 times a year or on each usage – say 1,000 times a year. Imagine if car insurance was all usage based? This would be fair; the way insurance is managed would be very different. This is the world of transactional insurance – insurance when you want it and no more. High volume, small value insurance policies based on the transaction. Managing the policy life cycle, monitoring and claims fully automatically and on a transactional basis. Microinsurance based on activities and usage. The distribution model and commissions for brokers, agents and partners all built into the process and a transparent claims process that has clear triggers for payment. Examples of this is parametric insurance for travel, hurricane and agriculture.

At MIC Global we are focused on changing the way business insurance is developed and processed. We are insurance with an API. We are in the forefront of that change; developing policies by the season, job, by the hour, by the day and by the KM, thus fitting our model to that of the platforms and the way small and micro businesses see risk. We are unbundling business policies so that the cover offered fits with peoples and business needs or the actual job or process being undertaken. Making Business Insurance transactional.

Interested in working with MIC Global? Check out our Careers page.

In The Press

Augmented Insurance – the New AI?

06.17.2019

AI

We hear the fear in people’s voices when we mention AI and ML, blue collar jobs going, eating into white collar jobs, autonomous cars, lorries, taxis.

The fear is what will we all be doing with our time? How will we earn money? Will we hear ‘they took our jobs….’ But this time it’s not some other country – it’s tech soaking up work like blotting paper. This ‘fear’ could even be hampering adoption of even the most basic AI and ML.

However, the truth is that things like autonomous cars will take time to fully come about, in a recent article in the WSJ it pointed to augmenting drivers in the here and now. Using the best AI tech, implemented in human-driven cars, to augment the human driver to reduce or even nearly eliminate road deaths in the USA as the quickest benefit. This could be the real competition to Autonomous cars, Human Augmented Driven Cars.

That could have huge implications for the fortunes of companies like Tesla. It could also spell doom for companies such as Uber and Lyft, which aren’t yet profitable and might not be until they can cut out their high human costs—that is, removing drivers from vehicles.

I think there will be a mix of driverless and human augmented cars. In the confines of a city, all the sensors and additional tech needed to support fully driverless cars could be implemented and hence I keep coming across this term, and we use it within our tech pitches, Augmented. Human and tech is deliverable, today.

All this doom and gloom for tech companies won’t come about. The issue is we do not want to be driving in cities and towns, we don’t want to be doing repetitive jobs, convenience has a value. Over time there will be a transition. The AI Augmented Human will take many forms and will be stiff completion for robots.

For insurance we use the term Augmented Insurance, this is AI for insurance. Adding AI Tech into a process and making the humans better. Adding AI Tech to human process is the way to improve, to offer new services, do better customer services and provide an overall better user experience.

I believe in insurance on-demand, insurance as a service, matching usage with payment. These can only be provided with AI and ML.

At MIC Global we are focused on changing the way insurance is developed and processed. We are insurance with AI built in, a digital/ augmented insurance company. We are in the forefront of that change; developing policies by the season, job, by the hour, by the day and by the Km, fitting our model to that of the platforms and the way small and micro businesses see risk. We are unbundling business policies so that the cover offered fits with peoples and business needs or the actual job or process being undertaken. Making Business Insurance transactional, the digital insurer for the new economy.

In The Press

Lessons from Amazon

06.15.2019

Insurance Industry

In the USA and China an increasing number of tech companies are bringing more in house. Is this the lesson for Insurance? Insource not Outsource?

Is this a lesson for Insurance companies?

Amazon has recently been building up more and more capability to deliver bring to an end, maybe forcing the end, of their FEDEX Express contract.

What does this mean for each of them in the USA?

In the short term, Amazon will have to lean on some of its other logistics partners to fill the void left by FedEx’s departure. FedEx delivered 3% of Amazon packages last year, accounting for about 200,000 Amazon boxes a day, according to figures cited by Business Insider.

In the long term, Amazon isn’t going to rely on legacy logistics firms, it’s going to threaten them. Amazon has been aggressively building out its own logistics unit.

This has already helped that Amazon ships more of its own products — Amazon delivered about one-quarter (26%) of the orders placed on its site last year, up from nearly zero five years ago, according to estimates from Wolfe Research cited by The Wall Street Journal.

As the company continues advancing into the logistics space via investments and new services, it will begin to threaten legacy firms for market share. Amazon even went as far as declaring itself a transportation and logistics company in its 2018 annual report.

For FedEx – not much change in the short term but longer term it could see its core business undermined as Amazon builds a Logistics service in the same way it built AWS.

Why you may ask – basically its more data and more control and more flexibility in the LONG TERM to use Tech – think here of autonomous truck…. If left with outsourced companies, Amazon would not have the data, skills and capabilities to build their own service. Bringing it inhouse means it can now automate at its OWN pace and transition the business very effectively. And this is kinda what it did with AWS – built up a core business for itself and then resold it to everyone else.

Lessons from Amazon for Insurance? What can the an insurance company do?

Bring core services in house.
Automate those core services
Roll out across entire business
License to smaller companies

This means getting on to the innovation path, investing internally, investing in IP, investing in new process all with the aim of automation and productivity.

In The Press

What is AI to Insurance?

06.06.2019

AI

What does it take to be a Digital Insurer? Well one of the basics is to have a deep and a sound understanding of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the capabilities to actually develop these for ‘insurance’ case studies.

Our main AI product is a set of several AI modules, we design very robust AI modules for individual requirement. While at the same time, users/products can do multiple analysis efficiently.

MIC used Auto-Machine Learning (Auto-ML) approach in our AI product, where Auto-ML decides the best ML Algorithm. We used best ML Algorithm as suggested by Auto-ML which enhances our product capability.

We see other companies develop generic AI products, then focus on insurance domain. However, our products are designed specially for Insurance case studies.

Typically companies say that they use AWS or Google or TensorFlow. We don’t use single ‘AI’ from the likes of AWS or Google.

What we do is use a ranges of tools and our own algorithms and code, the core being made up as follows:

TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning. It has a comprehensive, flexible ecosystem of tools, libraries and community resources that lets researchers push the state-of-the-art in ML and developers easily build and deploy ML powered applications

Keras is a high-level neural networks API that works as a layer.

Deep Learning (also known as deep structured learning or hierarchical learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised.

Natural Language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science, information engineering, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of natural language data.

Optical Character Recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image

Machine Learning (ML) is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computer systems use in order to perform a specific task effectively without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead.

Tensor Flow and Keras takes maximum memory and computing time, it is very big challenges for companies to deploy deep learning-based application. We over come this using our embedded application, this takes less memory and less computing time (0.5-1.2 sec per image) and can run on any operating system.

Our AI product allows us to focus on accuracy, for our use cases and successfully identifies body parts, damage, colour with user input images with 80-90 percent accuracy. Furthermore, we developed robust algorithm to calculate damage severity with very good accuracy 75-80 percent. This is growing as more data is applied and as we add features.

Our AI product takes less computing time with highly mechanized deep learning neural network architecture, this enables us to provide faster solutions suitable for insurance. Additionally we deal with error tolerance and to handle outlier/noise. This helps support multi-tasking with error less environments.

We use our team and they have their own definitions of our licensed tech.

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

The Aim of AI in Insurance

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

Get Back Fast – Have a Plan!

It gets worse….

Would you be able to cope with data recovery?

How to start?

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

Insurance Penetration

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In The Press

Pre-money Valuations

Getting pre money valuations

What is a 10 Bagger?

Let’s Grow Together

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

Microinsurance by MIC Global

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

Augmented Insurance – the New AI?

Let’s Grow Together

In The Press

Lessons from Amazon

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In The Press

What is AI to Insurance?

Let’s Grow Together