(Screenshot from eColón promotional video for Julieta bot. See link to video below story.)
Argentina’s first fully digital insurer, eColón, a division of Colón Seguros (Buenos Aires) announced at InsureTech Connect 2018 in Las Vegas that its Julieta bot virtual assistant is now enabled with improved AI and natural language processing to become the first “verbal” virtual assistant in the insurance industry. Julieta bot was launched along with eColon in Nov. 2017.
Eduardo Iglesias, CEO, Colón Seguros and founder of eColón.
“Julieta went to school and came back really smart,” quips Eduardo Iglesias, CEO and founder of Colón Seguros. “We’ve been working with Google and have relaunched Julieta bot with much stronger AI. We believe we are the first insurance company in the world selling insurance with a verbal virtual assistant.”
Julieta bot works over a variety of platforms, including Facebook Messenger and text, and was launched in 2017 with the capability to guide consumers through the insurance buying process and support the entire customer journey up to claims. The new, enhanced version Julieta can be accessed through the eColón web page or Google Assistant or Google Home and uses Google’s DialogFlow and TensorFlow technology.
A Policy in Less than a Minute
The new Julieta bot currently supports the entire insurance ownership process for eColón’s motorcycle insurance product. Through its use of geolocation and optical character recognition (OCR) for processing a photograph of an applicant’s motorcycle license, Julieta bot can issue a policy in less than a minute. The application does not currently support purchase of eColón’s homeowners policy, but policyholders can interact with Julieta bot for customer service and claims. “In December we’ll have full, end-to-end customer experience for homeowners,” comments Iglesias.
Earlier in 2018 Iglesias received Insurance Innovation Reporter’s Five Star Award winners for Latin America-based insurance innovators, receiving the honor for the Southern Cone region of South America. He recently launched the Latin American Investment Fund (LAIF), the first fund of its sort for the region dedicated to supporting startups driving innovation in financial services.