Some industries are still “not quite there yet” when it comes to adopting current technology. Medical professional liability insurance is one of them. Indigo plans to change that.
As a new insurance platform, Indigo is “leveraging new data and advanced technology to offer customized pricing for physicians and a streamlined experience for brokers.” Artificial intelligence is among the key technology forces it has incorporated to bring 21st century practices to what has historically been a conventional industry.
As co-founder and CEO of Indigo, Jared Kaplan, explains, “Basically, the idea (for Indigo) came from looking at all the avenues of insurance and seeing who is the last bastion for adopting new-age technology to make an old-school space better.”
The $12 billion medical malpractice space may be stable, but it’s “relatively archaic in the go-to-market strategy and innovation over time,” Kaplan says. This is where Indigo comes in. The company’s unique combination of experts from the medical malpractice and financial technology sectors has enabled it to develop a top solution for physicians and brokers.
Indigo's advanced technology will tailor pricing according to each physician's individual risk profile, ensuring fair and personalized costs. Additionally, the company significantly enhances brokers' success by offering lightning-quick quoting and binding services.
There are two major themes happening when it comes to technology in the insurance industry, Kaplan says:
“One is just automation throughout the process. Can you make it easier for someone to apply for insurance? And can you make it easier to underwrite that insurance? And the second piece, is when you’re doing the underwriting, can you use alternative data machine learning to make better risk predictions vs. the traditional underwriting process of decades before us.”
Indigo is at the center of these two trends, utilizing automation and machine learning at the same time. The company is putting the insurance industries’ use of 15-page applications, loss runs, and fax machines in the rearview mirror.
When a doctor comes to Indigo, they get “an MPI, it’s kind of like their Social Security number,” Kaplan says, adding that they then use the MPI to map it “to about 3,000 different attributes among three major data sources: socio and economic data, political data and health-care claims data.”
Using these data sources, he says, gives you results that are highly correlated to whether a doctor will have a claim sometime during the next year. Not to mention this technology-driven process makes the medical liability insurance experience easier for physicians, and brokers.
It’s this use of machine learning, along with available public and proprietary data, that allows Indigo to process large amounts of data in real time “and then continuously A-B test the underwriting models to figure out tweaks and how to predict future losses and drive down loss ratios.”
Kaplan adds, “Insurance for doctors has always been focused on classification and specialties and ensuring you know what you're insuring. And so that's what we're doing at Indigo. A big part of this is using third-party data to actually tease out what someone's doing and make sure that we underwrite them appropriately.”
For example, Indigo will develop coverage that is specialized to an individual doctor’s expertise since a plastic surgeon has different risk levels than a neurosurgeon or a dermatologist.
Artificial intelligence is driving a lot of conversations across a broad span of industries. Kaplan admits that while AI is being talked about more in the medical malpractice insurance space, “in practice, we don’t see it with large incumbents, whatsoever. And we think that’s the opportunity.”
Some insurers are using AI to streamline the cumbersome underwriting process. Indigo technology pulls together algorithms to comb through thousands of data points which leads to real-time decision-making on the part of the underwriter.
However, product technology is just one part of the foundation for the relationship Indigo is seeking to build with new customers. The second part is trust. Physicians will buy medical liability insurance, knowing that it’s very likely that they will eventually get a claim.
“And when you get a claim, that is one of the more difficult events that a doctor has to face in their career,” Kaplan says. “So, who you choose as your insurer has to have credibility, financial strength, and the wherewithal to hold your hand through this process. And that is not just a technological solution.”
The marketplace is full of insurers that have history and reputation on their side. Some of these companies have been around for 100 years. The team at Indigo is confident that they are building the right company for a modern world, and they want to be the company that doctors trust when they eventually face a claim.
Kaplan predicts that when Indigo proves itself in the expansive medical malpractice insurance marketplace, they will be able to “shake this industry up because we're doing it in a different way.
“At the end of the day, we want to take the hassle out of buying a required line of insurance for your business so you can focus on much more important things like life and death decisions. If we do that, we'll build a game-changing company,” he says.
Indigo is a new medical malpractice insurance platform that uses innovative technology to streamline the traditional malpractice insurance process. Now, physicians and medical groups can receive customized pricing that’s in line with their true medical malpractice risk.
In the event of a medical malpractice claim, Indigo partners with local claims defense attorneys to defend you, allowing you to continue focusing on what you do best — looking after your patients.
It’s time for a more customized medical malpractice insurance experience.
Get a quote today.
