Funds urged to not wait for AI regulation in insurance

Investment Magazine

The rapid embedding of AI across superannuation and insurance has raced well ahead of bespoke regulation, and the industry’s best defence against a “heavy hand” from Canberra is to police itself, according to Colonial First State director of insurance Craig Harrison. “I think it’s going to take time for the regulation to catch up with the pace of all that is happening,” Harrison told the Investment Magazine Insurance in Super Summit. “I do hope that we can do this in a way that we don’t need that heavy hand of regulation to come in and try and steer things in a different direction. [We can achieve that] by keeping the member at the centre and making sure that we’re getting the right outcome for the member in the circumstances. 

“Particularly in something like the claims process, if we allowed the AI agents to take over the decisioning on those really complex claims – having sat across so many complex claims committees at life insurers and now on the fund side, those claims that are truly in the middle of the grey [zone], they need that human intervention and protocol. “[It’s about] keeping those guardrails in place and making sure we’re not letting it go into that territory where regulators are feeling the need to step in and do something differently.” 

The rest of this article can be found at invstmentmagazine.com.au.