International Travel & Health Insurance Conferences

Meet our ITIC UK moderator

Phil Denman, Managing Director of Healix, spoke to Mandy Langfield about moderating at the upcoming ITIC UK.

ITIC UK is taking place from 8-9 May in Bournemouth.

ITIC UK is always a great networking opportunity, but what are you most looking forward to from the event this year?

Beyond the networking, ITIC UK is a place where you can meet experts from every corner of the UK travel insurance market.  The seminars are always packed full of up-to-the-minute research and take on some of the most challenging questions facing the industry.   With so much going on in and around the UK travel insurance space at the moment it’s a unique place to see the latest innovations and market movements.

The session you’re moderating is about artificial intelligence (AI), and its practical use and application for travel insurers; what can people hope to learn from that they haven’t heard before at other events?

We’re hoping to dive into the details of how AI is already changing travel insurance and what’s next.  With experts on stage and in the audience, I hope we can go beyond the headlines and get into how language models will drive the customer journeys of the future; where voice can drive product selection and personalisation to a level we can barely imagine today; also what AI assistants and natural language bots might bring to areas such as assistance, digital health and medical underwriting.

ITIC always endeavours to look to the future of our industry; what are your hopes for how travel insurers are going to adapt to meet the latest challenges they are facing, whether regulatory or market pressures?

Travel insurance is the same as many others.  We need to double down on being more customer-centric.  Trust ratings for insurance aren’t the best and travel is particularly challenging due to its complexity.  We almost try and do too much – gazillions of medical and 2 dozen cover sections – leads to impenetrable wordings, low customer understanding, and complexity of the process.  Technology will take us so far and I believe that the products require strong evolutionary (if not revolutionary!) change to meet future expectations.  ITIC is where we can start to understand the art of the possible and its implications.