28th July 2017

Insurance software house CDL has unveiled its latest InsurTech development, which brings a conversational style 'chat' interface to the consumer experience of insurance.

Known as Jay, the solution is inspired by the chatbot revolution and will enable customers to generate car and home insurance quotes through a more natural, conversation styled interface on mobile devices, rather than trawling through lengthy quotation forms.

Andrew Wormleighton, Director of Software and Technology at CDL, commented: "People are increasingly exasperated with the traditional 'quote form', which is now markedly out of kilter with their retail experience in other sectors.

"Jay is one of many exciting ways in which we are reinventing the insurance shopping experience to be more consumer-centric. By combining artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning technology such as image recognition, Jay marks a step change in the way customers can interact with insurance."

Jay is built on data, and uses CDL's data intelligence solution, Hummingbird, to automatically pre-populate input fields, moving away from traditional insurance shopping processes and making insurance more accessible for consumers.

Integration with image recognition technology also enables Jay to draw information from a photograph taken by a mobile device, whether of a driving licence, a car or even the family pet, to automatically complete relevant input fields.

There are two billion worldwide users actively using messaging services such as Whatsapp and Messenger, leading to growing interest in the development chatbots, whether computer programmes simulating conversation through artificial intelligence or, at a more basic level, giving pre-programmed advice to anticipated problems.

The development of Jay is the latest in a new suite of solutions spearheaded by CDL's newly launched InsurTechX initiative.

Nigel Phillips, Commercial Director at CDL, added: "With a pedigree of delivering robust, high volume technology solutions to the insurance market, CDL is uniquely placed to translate new, ‘start-up’ ideas into reality. We have been meeting with insurers and major retailers over recent months and the InsurTechX initiative has been very well received. Our first deployments of Jay are underway, and we look forward to announcing these imminently."