Transparency and insurance professionals: a study of Swedish insurance practice attitudes and future development

Jacob Dexe (), Ulrik Franke () and Alexander Rad ()
Additional contact information
Jacob Dexe: RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Ulrik Franke: RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Alexander Rad: RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, 2021, vol. 46, issue 4, No 3, 547-572

Abstract: Abstract The insurance industry is being challenged by increased adoption of automated decision-making. AI advances could conceivably automate everything: marketing, customer service, underwriting and claims management alike. However, such automation challenges consumer trust, as there is considerable public and scholarly debate over the ‘black box’ character of many algorithms. Insurance being a business of trust, this suggests a dilemma. One suggested solution involves adopting algorithms in a transparent manner. This article reports a study of how Swedish insurers deal with this dilemma, based on (i) eight interviews with insurance professionals representing four companies with a joint market share of 45–50% of the Swedish property insurance market and (ii) a questionnaire answered by 71 professionals in a Swedish insurance company. The results show that while transparency is seen as potentially valuable, most Swedish insurers do not use it to gain a competitive advantage or identify clear limits to transparency and are not using AI extensively.

Keywords: Transparency; Openness; Trust; Insurance; Competitive advantage; Sweden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41288-021-00207-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:46:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1057_s41288-021-00207-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/finance/journal/41288/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41288-021-00207-9

Access Statistics for this article

The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice is currently edited by Christophe Courbage

More articles in The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice from Palgrave Macmillan, The Geneva Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().