“AI breakthroughs such as ChatGPT will have a profound impact on the insurance industry. AI development in insurance has reached a tipping point, and ChatGPT-like technologies are the catalyst to push beyond that point,” said Mo Chen, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of North American insurtech company Seel, at the 2023 Fortune Global Tech Forum on March 30, 2023.

The forum, held in Guangzhou, gathered global executives, industry-leading scholars, renowned tech entrepreneurs, and notable investors to discuss hot topics including the computing economy, ChatGPT, electric vehicles, carbon neutrality, digital economy, chip manufacturing, healthcare, and AI. Themed “New Rules: Change and Continuity,” the event showcased emerging global tech trends. As an expert in AI-powered insurance technology, Mo Chen was invited to give a keynote speech.

As digital transformation accelerates across the insurance sector, AI is increasingly seen as a key enabler. While ChatGPT is well known for its natural language generation capabilities, it has other potential applications such as chatbots, auto-generated text, and speech synthesis. With continued evolution of ChatGPT and rapid development in China, the question is: will such technologies disrupt or empower the insurance industry?

In his keynote titled “ChatGPT + Insurance: Empowerment Upgrade or Beginning of Disruption?”, Mo Chen shared insights that sparked wide discussion among attendees and received high praise from industry professionals.

Mo Chen believes ChatGPT can empower multiple insurance functions, including data mining, actuarial science, product design, and customer service. As CTO of Seel, he has led efforts to integrate ChatGPT’s conversational capabilities into applications for intelligent insurance and senior care, creating tools like empathetic elderly chat companions, sales assistant bots, and smart training for agents.

Seel has piloted ChatGPT-style applications tailored for the financial industry, training models with insurance-specific knowledge to enhance digital marketing, smart customer service, and virtual agents—improving customer experience at scale.

“Seel is already internally testing ChatGPT-like technologies to enable chatbots to independently complete simple insurance marketing tasks—like introducing short-term insurance products and answering basic customer questions,” Mo Chen noted during a panel discussion with AI scholars.

Seel continues to lead AI innovation in insurance, previously launching the industry’s first online robot that integrates human-machine collaboration for accurate Q&A and tailored insurance recommendations.

ChatGPT’s ability to quickly summarize large volumes of text and provide concise answers can reduce time spent using search engines, said Chen. With more training data, its performance improves over time. This positions ChatGPT as a valuable tool for public education in risk management and insurance awareness, helping ease pressure on sales channels.

He highlighted several key advantages:

• Faster, more efficient customer service: ChatGPT enables instant conversations with customers and accurate responses to their queries.

• Enhanced customer analysis: By understanding language and behavior, ChatGPT helps identify customer needs and improve services.

• Automation: ChatGPT reduces manual labor by automating tasks like policy processing, ultimately cutting costs and improving service quality.

Additionally, Chen noted that ChatGPT exceeds traditional actuarial methods in areas like big data acquisition, real-time trend analysis, and custom product development. In customer retention and engagement, ChatGPT offers always-on availability, personalized interactions, and strong computing power—creating sticky user experiences that insurers have long desired.

“ChatGPT-style AGI’s powerful parsing capabilities will drive innovations in database management and marketing strategies,” Chen said. “AI in insurance has reached a critical juncture, and ChatGPT-like technologies are the catalyst to surpass it.”

Currently, Chen is focused on building AI content platforms and is the first in the insurance industry to apply ChatGPT-like models to actuarial science with notable original achievements. He outlined how these models can generate two key data sets:

1. Demographic and lifestyle data—such as population structure, income levels, industry distribution, family traits, and spending habits.

2. Health and risk data—like disease incidence and mortality rates, and average outpatient/inpatient costs.

By combining these with actuarial assumptions, AI models can assist with product development and pricing—though human input remains critical in designing insurance offerings.

“ChatGPT is essentially a large NLP model with general AI capabilities. By integrating domain-specific models, we’re enabling actuaries and product designers to work more efficiently,” he said.

Chen concluded:

“ChatGPT marks the start of a great new AI era. Its impact on society and the insurance industry won’t be sudden, but rather a gradual transformation across many operational layers. Embracing this change collectively is the only way to improve user experience and operational efficiency in insurance.”

(Author: Zheng Lijia – China.com Science)

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