Product development is a critical component of the value chain for insurers. High-quality products are essential for distribution while requiring precise calculation to ensure the insurer’s targets – such as the combined ratio – can be met. A key step in launching a new product or product generation involves reviewing competitor offerings.
The product information document (PID) of comparable competitor products can be of significant interest. However, conducting such comparisons entails substantial manual effort from product development teams. PIDs must be located and meticulously compared before any meaningful results are available – a time-consuming process.
While online platforms offer comparison tools for brokers or end customers, they are of limited use for internal product development. Market-available service providers that support product design can offer value, but they also place a strain on budgets. Initially, insurance products must be compared in terms of their substantive content; price-performance ratios are generally assessed later in the process, once claims and actuarial departments have been consulted. The volume of available documentation – primarily PIDs – is considerable.
Moreover, successful product development demands not only deep technical and process expertise, but also a careful balancing of customer needs with financial and market constraints.
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The integration of our Generative AI (GenAI) tools offers effective support in addressing these challenges within product development. For instance, our insurance-specific expert system enables users to upload and compare documents such as PIDs, and to query their contents directly. The aim is to deliver neutral comparative insights across any number of PIDs within any given business line. Through integration with a Large Language Model (LLM), such as OpenAI, the system can analyse even complex insurance documentation, extract the most relevant content and present it in a structured manner. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) further tailors the system to insurance-specific terminology and contexts, allowing for the delivery of bespoke recommendations. In addition, our dedicated PDF parsers – designed to suit specific document layouts – facilitate the efficient ingestion and vectorisation of document content, offering a significant advantage over conventional chatbot solutions.
Depending on the use case, it is also possible to prevent submitted data from being shared with the LLM provider for model training purposes.
Implementing GenAI-powered solutions brings a range of benefits to product development:
1. Automating analysis processes allows product teams to benchmark against the market more quickly and monitor trends with greater ease.
2. GenAI facilitates in-depth evaluation of large volumes of PIDs, enabling development of offerings that are aligned not only with competitors but –more importantly – with customer expectations.
3. Integrating GenAI into the product development lifecycle promotes operational efficiency and improves collaboration across departments including sales, claims, and actuarial – enhancing decision-making capability through better information processing.
4. At Fincon Reply, our consultants bring years of insurance industry experience across the full value chain, combining this with AI-driven methods to deliver customer-centric, forward-looking solutions.
Let’s work together to identify the ideal solution for your product development needs –tailored precisely to your business environment.
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Fincon Reply is a business and IT consultancy specializing in the financial services industry. Fincon Reply proactively advises banks, the Sparkassen Finance Group, insurance companies and near-financial companies as well as their suppliers on their digital transformation. The company provides on-site support with specialised teams of consultants and developers and delivers turnkey solutions.
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