Hiscox CIO: Automation doesn't mean job losses

Insurance firm CIO says he isn't seeing AI and automation taking people's jobs, rather it takes the boring work away from them

Automation and artificial intelligence technologies are being rolled out at insurance firm Hiscox, but its CIO has stated that it is freeing up staff to work on higher value work, rather than taking their jobs away as some fear.

A report from consultancy McKinsey Global Institute in late 2017 claimed that automation will take 800 million jobs globally by 2030, however those numbers are now being questioned as organisations find that there are still uses for humans in the workplace.

Ian Penny, CIO of Hiscox, explained that underwriters are now less involved in analysing new policies in his organisation as the process is now largely automated.

"Any policy that comes into the UK business now moves across to our new automation platform," said Penny. "This allows us to take all the data points in and push them through our rating and pricing engines. Previously we would have got underwriters involved to look over new policies, but now we can price them effectively without human input," he added.

But rather than making staff redundant, they now work on higher value tasks.

"That frees underwriters to work on the policies that are slightly different, or more important. From the customer perspective it means we have time to discuss your individual requirements. If you're not quite the norm, or your organisation has something different about it, we can have an individual conversation with you, because most standard policies are priced straight through the platform. So our underwriters can work on adding value," Penny stated.

This echoes the thoughts of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who said recently that fears around AI causing job losses are unfounded.

Hiscox now has a Robotic Process Automation centre of excellence, with over half a dozen business processes automated currently, and dozens more on the way.

"We're seeing that freeing up internal staff so that rather than doing rote work, they get to work on higher value tasks. We're not seeing this heralded idea of AI and automation doing everyone out of a job.

"If the job is just to crank the handle, then machines can do that 24 hours a day. They document everything they do, and they never get bored. But our staff can bring intuition and that human element to the table, and now they can exercise those skills more often. They can pivot more towards understanding the customers and products. From IT perspective they can be more on the front foot looking at the business we're in and how can we transform it, as opposed to cranking through business as usual."

However, some IT roles are likely to change or become less needed as automation technology develops.