5 Ways New Compliance Systems Can Help Life Insurers

Life insurers have always warned callers, and their own sales representatives and customer service reps, that “this call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.”

Lee Garf says the financial services sales calls that have been monitored by live humans should now be monitored by artificial intelligence-based systems.

Garf is the general manager for compliance at Nice Actimize, a financial services compliance technology company that’s based in Ra’anana, Israel.

Nice Actimize sells systems that use AI methods and other tools to help financial services companies prevent and detect many kinds of compliance problems, such as money laundering and insider trading.

The company’s new Surveil-X Suitability for Wealth and Insurance system can help life insurers and other financial services companies automate the supervision of employees who must comply with the sales standards that apply to life insurance and wealth management products.

The system detects whether sales reps appear to be offering products that suit customers’ needs, and whether the reps appear to be complying with best interest rules, by putting consumers’ interests first, according to Nice Actimize.

The system is based on the technology used in the Nice Actimize Surveil-X Holistic Conduct Surveillance system.

Here are five thoughts Garf has about compliance technology, drawn from an interview.

1. Agent and advisor surveillance can be compatible with privacy.

Garf noted that live-human supervisor monitoring is already common in the financial services sales call world, and that the people monitored by the Nice Actimize system understand that they could be monitored.

“There’s always notification that people are being recorded,” Garf said.

2. An automated monitoring system can be in many places at once.

When live humans supervise financial services calls, they typically sample about 1% to 2% of the calls.

When a Nice Actimize system handles the monitoring, “we’re automatically reviewing all conversations,” Garf said.

3. Automated systems are patient.

Because an automated system listens as well as it can all the time, without getting bored, it can be about 30% to 50% more accurate at identifying possible problems, Garf said.

4. Automated systems are learning.

Even five years ago, AI systems flagged too many possible problems, Garf said.

Now, he said, “we’re dramatically more accurate.”

AI-based systems can now alert a live-human supervisor when a rep appears to be pressuring or manipulating a consumer, Garf added.

5. The AI-based systems of the future could take more initiative.

Now, Garf said, automated surveillance systems send alerts when problems have already cropped up.

In the future, he said, the systems may call for a supervisor to step in when trouble appears to be looming, but before any serious problem has occurred.

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Lee Garf (Photo: Nice Actimize)