Danish tech company entering the Dutch market with a new AI-solution and approach to combat insurance fraud

With the help of in Scandinavia developed artificial intelligence-based models, human behaviour is accelerated to detect more fraud, recourse, increase workforce efficiency and sales. Figures show that using the Peopleway solutions to accelerate human behaviour, leads to a significant increase in business performance. Not over time, but within just a few weeks. Now that Peopleway has already more than proven itself in Scandinavia, it is time to set foot on Dutch soil.

The Dutch insurance market was introduced to the Peopleway team at the beginning of June during the Schademiddag of the Dutch Association of Insurers. The team managed to impress by showing figures that showed the number of detected fraud cases has tripled on average since Peopleway was introduced.

The company was founded more than 15 years ago by Danish CEO Lars Julin. Together with country partner for the Netherlands Stephan Jonathan, Peopleway is now making a roadshow of several major Dutch insurers in the coming months.

Originally a psychologist, Lars focuses his company on the development of people and organisational performance working with leading international clients within Finance, FMCG and the Production Industry. Peopleway researched for 15 years and collected more than 40 million data points on the link between people and performance. This research showed that only 15% of the investment a company puts into people development creates lasting behavioural changes. As little as 5% of the investment is converted in to improved organisational performance and thus pays off.

With many years of focused research and development, the company has now developed a new AI approach to accelerate human behaviour driving improvement of business results. This approach has been developed together with leading Scandinavian insurance companies and Peopleway is now entering the insurance market in Holland.

Lars: "The focus on insurance actually started only three years ago, when we were challenged by one of the largest Danish insurance companies to think along. They had invested a lot in fraud detection solutions but were not satisfied with the results. The company wondered how to improve their ability to detect much more fraudulent damage claims.

So, we started thinking more specifically about the link between behaviour and business performance. Why are some behavioural patterns more important than others improving business results? AI has created a breakthrough for us finding the missing links”.

Next, using behavioural science we started figuring out how to change the behavioural patterns driving performance. How to help claims handlers find more fraud and thus make more savings.

Peopleway's Netherlands country manager Stephan Jonathan is quite open about it: "Having been a buyer myself, I didn't initially believe much of the story when I still worked for Nationale Nederlanden. I can still hear myself thinking: 'Nice story, but first show some results and output.' Well, I saw those. Besides behavioural change, I really saw the win-win situation for insurers. Peopleway can be implemented within as little as four to six weeks. Results are often visible after just a few weeks. What's more, the proof of concept pays for itself within weeks. It is self-learning and continuously optimised model to accelerate and reinforce the behaviour of claims handlers."

Figures show that on average 10% of all claims are actually fraud. Only 0,8% is currently detected by insurers. The question for Peopleway was: how can we detect more fraud?

Lars: "Based on all our data and research, we felt that we should not teach people how to do their job, but rather inspire to accelerate behaviours that makes a difference. Our AI, models, accelerates and reinforces human behaviour that instantly helps the individual employee and business to perform better.

Stephan: "The solution helps the individual claims handler remember what is important. So we accelerate the human factor by strengthening the gut feeling, intuition, nose and awareness. These are factors that are innate in claims handlers who perform well. They can do this, they know what fraud is, they know how to find fraud, but sometimes they just forget. Or sometimes they are just not alert enough. So, our AI helps claims handlers to be alert when needed. This is done in several ways by using various intelligent micro nudging technologies. The result is significantly reduced claims processing time, more detected fraud and recourse opportunities and lower claims costs."

Figures show that Peopleway clients save around 2-3 percent instead of 0.8 percent. Stephan explains: "We need to do much more to combat insurance fraud and help each other. Companies should not stop using their current technologies. We are simply adding something completely new to the fraud detection frameworks. European research shows that at least 10% of all claims are fraudulent. In 2021 Dutch insurances paid roughly 12 billion euros in claims coverage. 85 million euros was saved due to fraudulent claims bringing the detection rate around 0,7%.

And our figures show that Scandinavian insurers using the Peopleway solution save at least an additional 1% on their total damage claims. Adding 1% additional savings in the Dutch market qualifies for 120 million extra savings. A serious amount that could be used to improve the combined ratio, premium prices and profitability."