Claims Intelligence
The podcast from Owl.co, the leader in AI solutions for claims teams, featuring thoughtful discussions with insurance & technology experts to inform and delight industry leaders about everything AI and insurtech.
Claims Intelligence
Navigating AI Adoption in Insurance with Joey Daryanani
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Joey Daryanani, VP of Shared-Services Operations at CSAA Insurance Group and an acclaimed thought-leader in the insurance space with speaking appearances at some of the industry's largest conferences, joins Sean Merat, CEO of Owl.co, to provide a strategic roadmap for insurance leaders adopting AI. Joey leverages his 40+ years of experience in the industry that includes 15+ years at the corporate-executive level to discuss how insurance leaders should approach AI adoption and technological innovation, emphasizing the importance of operational discipline for ROI, human-centric value for trust, and informed & empathetic management techniques for frontline buy-in.
Thank you, Joey, for joining us on this session. Really appreciate your time. As a way of intro, I mean, Joey brings a very rare and deeply practical perspective to today's conversation. He spent over four decades with CSIA, including more than 35 years of those, just across the claims organization, holding numerous leadership roles, helping build and scale high-performing operational teams. So in his current role, Joey oversees the support services for CSA's operational team and helped lead the company's work around the legal system abuse, which is one of the most important and complex issues facing insurance today. And then earlier in his career, he led claims central services, including areas like sub, salvage, total loss, Medicare, claims training, basically everything. He's also helped launch and lead special services, a business that grew out of an employee innovation challenge during a pandemic and which expanded into claims handling, training, and uh called center support. So Joey, great to have you and thank you so much for joining.
SPEAKER_01John, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00So, I mean, uh, you know, with over four decades, 40 years uh with CSIA, um, and much of that, you know, across the uh various uh functions and operations. I'm I'm curious to know when when you hear AI innovation and insurance, what what's feeling genuine to you? Like what is what is what is fresh and new and um and what feels like a continuation problem the insurers have been always trying to solve?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think great question. You know, if you don't mind, I want to start off by splitting those two words. So let's just take innovation to start. Innovation is nothing new to us. Uh, in recent history, that's what we've done. So I want to dissect innovation first. When innovation was the big buzz that everybody was talking about. Everybody thought this had to be some transformational idea around innovation. As we look back, it turns out that while we had some transformational ideas as an organization and as an industry, uh, we really celebrated the small incremental wins, right? So I think that's important to focus on when we talk innovation. Now, as I think about the word innovation, I think of it as being the what. What are we trying to do? What are we, what problems are we trying to solve for? Now you've sort of introduced the word AI, right? And AI to me is the how. It's not the what. So I think we put that in perspective is making life simpler by trying to figure out what tools we have. I think it's important to sort of stress that. To me, emerging technology is a tool, it is not the why. So to boil down the answer to the question you've provided is I don't think anything has changed as far as innovation in the insurance industry. It is ripe. Um, we continue to make some uh some good progress in that space with the introduction of emerging technology and the how, I think it'll even make it better for our people. I hope I answered that question.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that makes a uh a ton of sense. I had a conversation with um uh you're familiar with Gary Kasper of the um the transport, and he um the way he uh would talk about this is that AI is a tsunami. And it's going to, you know, it's but it's us humans that basically have to direct it. Um so very similar, I think that analogy kind of feels similar to what you're saying is we need to give it direction. It's a it's a tool, and so we need to know what we're going to solve for and use um uh use it as a tool. How do you how do you come to um uh deciding which problems would be best solved with um with such technologies?
SPEAKER_01You know, that's the interesting question. So when we had a conversation before this call, uh I think I made it very clear that I love my toys and I continue to love my toys, right? Uh I'm the guy that uh when I'm talking to potential vendor partners, I don't think there's one in the recent memory I have that hasn't talked about their ability to roll out AI. It almost is, I don't even know what it means anymore, right? Um this is where I give credit to our CEO, Mike Zuckerman, who has made it very clear that the platform is do less things, but do them correct and do it better. And that's where the answer, I think, to your question is for people like us, getting discipline on what we're trying to solve for, actually based on business outcomes and return on investment, I think is super important. And not take in, not ingest more than you can chew, because you do that. Um most often I've seen that sort of fall off the rails and things not get implemented for a few things, a few reasons. One is price, second is the organization only has so much appetite uh to execute, right? And with IT resources the way they are internally, um we have to be careful and really pick and choose uh and get very clear on what is the problem we're want to solve for.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think I I agree with you. I think uh, you know, we're we have a front door seat with many different carriers, and that is a refreshing take because um it's it's you know a lot of carriers are doing AI for the sake of doing AI, whatever that even means. And um, and so it gets very expensive very quick. Um and I think um it's prudent to think about um the efficacy and and the and and the applicability. Um so it promised, like if you think about the um uh uh the positions that you uh oversee or have over seen in the past, like whether I mean whether it's claims handling, shared services training, um uh uh the fraud detection, litigation, can you give us like maybe uh um a few practical examples of um of some of these um uh like how you would think about the the problem statement, how it can be solved with um with uh some of these newer front or uh or just AI technologies and um and how you would track basically the um the uh the success.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, this might sound like oversimplifying, right? So let me just start with the use case around trying to summarize and evaluate demand packages that we get in the casualty world. Yeah um I I go back 40 years and spread that demand across my dining room table and have to look at every document, every word to make sure that I've got it right, write that file up, present it for authority. That whole process might literally take a day. Yeah. The first use case that we're focused on is summarizing that so that our employees are focused on the relationship with either the lawyer or the claimant, it's focused on understanding the type of case we have versus trying to summarize it themselves, um, and it is focused on ultimate resolution, significantly reducing cycle time. So, in everything that I've said there, there's an ROI that is quantifiable. Yes, that is actually hard dollars. Let me give you a soft dollar example um first notice of loss. We've trained our employees in the past to focus on quality assurance. While you're a first notice of loss called, your notes have to be perfect, your summarization has to be perfect, your next best action has to be correct, all of those things, and because of that, the intent was great, right? But the outcome focused more on how can this pass QA? Yes, what gets left behind more often than not is we have between 12 and 15 minutes to build a relationship with our member on the phone reporting a claim. Right and typically, and I love this example when you have a member reporting a glass claim, and we ask, because we're following a script, what the weather was, knowing it just doesn't matter. But we are so focused on getting it right, right? That we lose the relationship portion, which now we have the ability to go after. So summarizing, note-taking, translation, next best action, all of those things in a first notice of loss example really helps us build the relationship with a member and really start that investigation on the right floor. And the third is you know, we're we're a hundred and twenty-plus-year-old company. We have a lot of data. Right, we don't know what we have in the database, more so what's in the database of the entire insurance industry. Let's just focus on us first. So being able to access who we're dealing with, what the files in the past have looked like, what the settlement has been, what the negotiation was, is especially important for our team. So I've given you three examples that to us make it very clear on why we picked the first three. Now, they're about, you know, there's a bunch that go behind that, but pause on the other stuff. Let's get good at these first three before we move on to item number four.
SPEAKER_00I guess, um, I guess what I'm hearing is your priority is uh you you're putting the claimant experience up front, whether it's um added relationship, um, better care, better intervention. I mean, all of these things, if you have um the uh the proper systems that can automate the mundane tasks, um, you're able to all of a sudden uh uh it's like removing 70% uh from your uh adjuster's plates, um, and then um and then they can they can actually do what humans do best, which is which is relationship, empathy, um, and just listening.
SPEAKER_01So Sean, I think you hit it right there, right? Um we are complete let me back on it. We are the business of people helping people solve real problems. Okay. So yes, being able to do these three things frees our people up to build the relationship with claimants and members. And let's just take legal system reviews. How we gotten to where we are today, in my opinion, is if you just listen to the ads on TV, if you look at the billboards, it's all about trusting your insurance adjuster. That's the whole premise of uh people that take advantage of the system. And if we can do a better job building trust within very little time at the beginning of that claim, you know, either while we're handling the property damage while the injury claim is pinning, or taking care of them and proving the ads and the commercials wrong, uh, to me, that's your advantage. Uh, and it's all about trust.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I fully agree with that. It I and that's lost on um, you know, we we work with um many of the tier one carriers, and oftentimes we find ourselves being the um the uh uh I guess uh the the the seat in the house at the table on behalf of the claimants. Um and internally we we we we actually in in our company, even though we sell to the insurers and they're our partners, um we build, we like to think that we're building technologies for the end claimants because if we can actually improve their uh experience, we've already um we're we're uh doing right by our partners. But that's a conversation that I find that often gets um overlooked in a lot of boardrooms where they um, you know, because the easy wins are just too accessible um around. And it's it's you can you can win a few battles, but you will end up losing the war.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so let's get real at this point, right? Um what are the things that can easily be handled within the insurance space, right? How can how can we influence the bottom line the quickest? And the answer to that is expenses. We have control over that, it shows up really quickly, right? On whether it's an increase in expense or a reduction in expense. And this is why the world, not just insurance, yeah, has focused on the expense side of it. That is not what we're here doing at CSA. Over here, it's really how do we improve the workflow by either summarizing documents, faster cycle times, fraud detection, um, reducing repetitive tasks, all on behalf of the member/slash claimant, to me building that trust. So that's how I make the connection. Instead of going where the mind goes really quickly, which is how do we reduce expenses? To me, this is not or should not be an expense point.
SPEAKER_00I I that makes a ton of sense. Now, the the the here's the uh difficult question. I'm actually really curious because I always sit on this side, never sit on your side. And um, and we had the benefit of uh, you know, we we've been in AI shop since before AI was cool. Um, and um and we've racked up most of the tier one carriers. But for um, and back then, you know, um AI had a whole different meaning. Now every day, every conference we go to, there's um everyone um um and their mothers are are having an AI company basically launched. From where you're sitting, there are so many different providers um offering um solutions to the very problems that you uh that you've listed that you want to focus on. Um and and I guess you know they all look impressive, right? Of course, as a as a uh vendor or a startup, most of your job, most of your focus goes into creating really nice demos, right? Because that's what sells. How do you how how do you um you know distinguish between all these different providers to try to figure out which one is the right one for you? Um as I as you pointed out, your IT resources are constrained. What is what is the winning uh operational process here?
SPEAKER_01Wow, loaded question, right? So as a hundred plus year company, one of my learnings are uh you absolutely need to get disciplined around um what's your strategy instead of bolting this on and bolting that on and waking up one day all of a sudden and you've got a bunch of stuff that either isn't supported anymore because these companies are no longer around, or you've you've just not had a good enough strategy around what you're trying to do. Let me explain that a little more. So there are, I'm making this number up, 200 things I want to do in that space. If I did all of them at once, or I did all of them really quickly without a strategy around data, and without a strategy overall around how and what the interface would be for our employees, I don't think it'll succeed at all. And we'll be right back where we were when we started the journey around replacing all our core systems. Yeah. Right. So uh the way I think of it is in the example that I've given you of 200 different things, uh I run training. I can't go to our employees saying, hey, I'm gonna teach you 200 different things. Right. Uh there's just not that capacity in the human brain to ingest that. The way I think of it is, and we're really focused on it, is first let's decide strategically what is the interface of the employee. Is it the claim system, is it the policy system, is it the HR system, is it the is it, you know, whichever is it finance system? And if you I've just thrown out five different systems. The way we're thinking of it is one interface with those different systems sitting behind it, uh huh, where you interact as an employee with that one, whether you want to log in volunteer hours, or you want where in the policy does it say this about additional transportation, right? Or where is the next company hauling in? It's one interface, and then the way you train to it is the way Apple sends in their upgraded sort of software 1.1, 1.2, 17.8, where you don't see anybody complaining about, oh, I gotta download 17.8. Why? Because it works. So as we train, what I've emphasized with the training team is let's use that approach. It isn't I'm gonna train you on 200 different things. I'm gonna do 1.0, 1.1 until we get to wherever the sort of current technology is in whatever year that is moving forward. But to be able to do that, you got you got to be very disciplined on the platform and the interface of the employee. I'm interacting with my iPhone, I'm not interacting with the apps.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes sense. So just um uh I guess firstly, on the um uh on on trying to pinpoint the correct technology to use. Um I I hear you on um on the fact that it should um uh uh you know integrate with your system of records, or whatever that is, I guess. So I'm assuming uh you are you thinking about this from uh uh uh like a it's a it's an in-house built platform or a core system like a guide wire being your one interface? Like how are you thinking about that one interface?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um as many. Well, there's a question around build versus buy, and that's a whole nother session for us. Uh we're getting really good at trying to decide what's our core competency, what do we build versus what do we buy, right? Um, so there are vendor partners out there that that we have utilized that are going to be much better than us ever building it because that's their line of business, right? And we get to take advantage of the improvement and whatever output they have. Yes, right. So again, um as I walk the floor at the conferences, I know which players have the reputation and I know which ones are new. It doesn't mean I don't learn from the new ones, uh, but I have to also be very guarded around hey, buyer beware, around historical uh ability to deliver and execute and all of that. The other thing you hear frequently is hey, we'll get that done in four weeks. We all know that doesn't matter, right? Um so strategy is important and discipline is important. I can't stress those two things enough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think uh makes sense. Um so would would it be fair to you say that um your preference in um uh is is to work with reputable uh providers because um it gives you like it's it's too noisy outside of those. Like the newcomers, while they may have very um uh attractive offerings, it's hard to separate fact from fiction. And that and the most Prudent path would be to go after what's being provided by the more reputable and wait until some of the newcomers maybe build a reputation before because otherwise it may be too much of a time suck. Is that is that a correct assessment of what you're saying?
SPEAKER_01I think that's a fair statement. I think where I'm more sort of leaning towards is I'll give you a live example. This week I looked at a really good total loss valuation for auto capability from a start. And while it was appealing, my first question is have you engaged these large uh estimating organizations? And why aren't you partnering with them so that when we use their solution, it's more of a global solution that gets protected? Right. Right? To me, that's the answer to that is critical. Because if I was them, instead of pedaling their stuff to each carrier, if they did it to the top four, they've got the entire market covered. Yes. And it's a win-win, I think, for the carrier with peace of mind saying I'm not dealing with a startup that may or may not be there tomorrow. I'm dealing with the people that I'm already doing business with with my estimating platform that has all these solutions, we'll think.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, I think um uh makes a ton of sense. Um now, if once you've identified the the the right, so you you already talked about identifying the end problem. What is it we're trying to solve? You've identified um kind of the uh the technology uh and how you want to uh scale this through that one platform that you mentioned. Now it comes to um the people that are going to be users, you you um spoke about them you know having an easier uh uh upscale uh um experience by having to be on a singular platform. But um what is what is um how in your experience have you been able to get adoption um through uh these folks? Because as we know, I mean, depending on the line, but you know, for claims adjusting, um, you know, adjusters are you know often they they also have like many decades of experience, they don't like change a lot of times. Um you might feel some resistance um with technology. Have you experienced that? I'm sure you have, and um, and I guess how do you um how how do you approach the adoption aspect of this?
SPEAKER_01I think you agree that the simple principle around what's in it for me applies not just to leaders, not just to CEOs, but to the front lines as well.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Using that as a premise, um, what I see frequently, and I would encourage us never to do this, is to lead by PowerPoint. Is we've already made up our mind, we're going down this path, somebody's gonna deliver a PowerPoint in front of 200 people and expect adoption tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01I love having conversations, especially with people that are actively resisting, love it. Because then I get to learn, I get to understand what the pain points are, I get to show and tell. What I worry about are the passive resistors where you don't know what's on their mind, what's quiet. Um, and for leaders, um, I make it a point uh to hit up those quiet ones more than I do the ones that provide me with the noise I need. Yes. And um one is being very frank. I talked about trust in the industry. Here's another place where trust is super important. I need our people to trust me when I sit down and say, Hey, this is how I believe it'll benefit you and us and the member. What do you think? And getting them involved at the onset versus hey, I just heard this PowerPoint, and it's the flavor of the week or the month, or you name it. Um, I think adoption suffers, and that's where um most of these expenses kind of cost is you never get the full benefit because people are threatened by it. Right.
SPEAKER_00Why um how how how would we go get over that fear for uh uh some of the employees, you think? Um, about that uh that this is um an existential.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um the way I personally did it, um I I don't know if this is the right way or not, is when I was faced with emerging tech AI, um, it was important for me to learn first. And um I took the position that I'm not the smartest person in the room and I need to learn. Where I pushed my team was the trainers I wanted further ahead because they were going to be the ones that would pull the people along. Right? So I learned first, and when I did that, I encouraged all of us to play. Let's just play with it, let's just throw something in there, make it funny, see what happens. And when we did that, I what I found was people had fun with it, and that was okay, because then it wasn't a threat. And then I evolved from having fun with it to okay, I want you so the way I want our people thinking about it is what is one thing that we should be doing today that we're not able to do because of fill-in-the-blank excuse. So, in your world, Sean, what is that? Sean tells me what that is and say, all right, now let's focus on a business problem and let's have fun. And I'll tell you, uh most people have been able to adopt to it where um while they're I'm sure people still worry about it, um it's they're more apt to try it and say, you know, it's fine. You know, when we introduced, I'm gonna date myself, email. How many people said it's not gonna get to where it needs to go, people are gonna steal it, blah blah blah. And if you look back at the impact email has had on the human race, you know, it didn't take the jobs right, right? It may have in the post office, but that was replaced with packages today, so that doesn't count, right? But people today without email, and the next best thing after that, there's five other things, is we've just come to normalize that in our lives. And this is how I want to think of these tools.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's very sensible. We um very similarly, I think when you think back not that long ago, um, big organizations had buildings full of accountants, which basically tallied numbers, um, which has been replaced by uh uh Excel sheets. It hasn't replaced the people, um, it's replaced some maybe, but um at the end of the day, um the world is full of accountants and um and there's it elevates the work that uh they can do. And I think your positioning is very sound initially, which that this is just a tool. Um, it's not here. Tools don't necessarily replace people, it it's it's there for people to do their jobs more effectively and and do better and bigger jobs. I think the only existential uh uh uh crisis is for potentially for individuals who um resist the change or improvement, uh, and that's it, and that's beyond AI. I think that's beyond anything else. If you don't want to grow with the times, like if you didn't want to adopt email um in your example, um, it wouldn't logically, it wouldn't, and it shouldn't turn out so great and so well. Um now I think um as and and and to your earlier point, I think this there's an interesting metric that we have. So we we um onboard thousands and thousands of adjudicators, claims adjudicators, per client, per line of business even. And what we found is that the most outspoken and critical uh end users end up being the highest uh uh adoption, uh biggest uh champions, highest adoption metrics. And this is across the board, because I think exactly as you said, you know exactly what you need to um address with them. And they're doing this not because they don't like the tool, they actually want the tool to succeed or the um or the initiative to succeed. So those are your best champions. Um, the passive, um how how would you find um the the passive, what did you call them? The passive disagreeers?
SPEAKER_01Resistors.
SPEAKER_00The passive resistors. How how how do you identify that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's the hard part, right? If you think about what you just said, um, as I look back over my career, nothing's changed. You're gonna always have the active ones and the passive ones. And my secret sauce to deal with the ones that I think are passive is having those one-on-one conversations saying, hey, here's how I'm thinking of things. How are you thinking of it? And um, our staff meeting on Tuesday, whatever. Um, I really want you to give your opinion, given some time, right? Because at that point, they're either going to tell everybody what they think on Tuesday, or they're gonna tell me what they think right now. Yeah, and frankly, it's okay. Because again, as leaders, we should thank those that give us honest feedback, because more often than not, we deliver a product that absolutely is a failure on the front lines, and it's tied into some bonus or some goal I date or whatever, and now you're dealing with something that doesn't work. Yes, we underestimate the power of people, and um frankly at C SAA, that's our secret sauce.
SPEAKER_00I think that's um uh makes a lot of sense to me. The um now uh switching gears a little bit on the legal system abuse. I think um there's that's a major pressure point right now. Um how how um do you think that we could utilize some of the newer technologies, um AI technologies, to better understand the litigation risk, the um the um uh claim complexity, but without crossing the line for order over automation and you know, because we know that can go down a uh wrong rabbit hole, but and unfair decisioning, things like that.
SPEAKER_01So we can agree that building trust is our way of getting to the claimant first. Um let's talk about what's available out there, right? Um I talked about building trust in first notice of loss. The other way to build trust is getting that case to the right claim handler as quick as possible, right? So that's a workflow improvement that I think we need a significant improvement on just as an um industry. The other piece is sharing of information, right? So I'm not talking about antitrust here, I'm talking about I talked earlier about leveraging the information, the data we have internally, but now we're also starting to see uh carriers get together and say, how can we share information without sharing personal information? I'm not interested in the personal information, but I do want carriers to sort of understand what's going on, uh, because frankly, the other side has done it and they've done a very good job with it. I'm sure I'm on a list somewhere that talks about my experience and my way of negotiating and what I do and don't make it. And um I think we need to do a better job, but again, I'm very encouraged. I'm starting to see things move along.
SPEAKER_00Do you see any pitfalls um in some of the utilization that um uh if deployed incorrectly foundationally, going to lead in things like you know, unfair decisioning or um or uh liabilities, cost?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so this is where I go back to human ability, right? Um for us, I I don't foresee, and I could be I don't foresee a time where any decision that impacts our member is done without a human. I just don't see. And if I'm correct, and and again, uh I would double down on that, if I'm correct, then I think um it will handle that risk because there is that risk every single time where uh bad things could happen, and as in any technology, as in any process, as I mean, again, take technology out of it, right? It happens today, so getting the right person involved in the right case is especially important, especially when there's a decision that impacts your customer policy holder, in our case, our member.
SPEAKER_00Got it. Um, and um I guess my final question: if we were to look five years ahead, um, what part of insurance operation do you think will look meaningfully different because of AI? And what part do you hope remains fundamentally human? I I guess the second part you already answered.
SPEAKER_01Just answer that, right? Um there is plenty of things we can do to improve workflow. And I mentioned the three that we're going after. Uh, there's a whole world around summarization. There's a significant number of initiatives around faster cycle types. Uh, we talked earlier about fraud detection and connecting the dots and who is related to whom in the world, um, and reducing repetitive tasks. Um, will jobs change? Of course. Uh have jobs changed over the 40 years that I've been here, of course. Right? I've had to reinvent myself a dozen times over the 40 years. That won't change. So while I don't know what tomorrow will bring from a technology perspective, I'm sure jobs will continue to evolve. But the human in the loop, in my opinion, stays. Incredible. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00That's um, that's all the questions. Sorry for bombarding you with um with all of these, but um, all has been um incredibly valuable. Uh, really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. Um thank you so much.