Fintech Friday: FRISS

FRISS was founded to not only make insurers aware of fraud, but to make the industry more honest. Jeroen Morrenhof, co-founder and CEO at the company tells us more.

Back in 2006, two Dutch insurance consultants Jeroen Morrenhof and Christian van Leeuwen were feeling increasingly frustrated with the rise of fraud in the insurance market. 

“We noticed that fraud was not on the agenda of insurers and that if we wanted to do something about it, we had to do it ourselves,” said Morrenhof. “We spoke with senior executives and noticed that insurance companies would just raise their premiums in order to tackle the challenges of fraud. Resulting in a lot of money flowing to insincere, dishonest people. Making insurance more honest was the driver to found FRISS, and it is our mission today still.”

And so FRISS was born. Providing fraud analytics software to personal and commercial insurers worldwide, the firm supports insurance companies by assessing risks from the beginning, from the point of underwriting. When someone applies for a policy, FRISS gives that person a rating for the risk they would bring in, which is based on a combination of expert, industry knowledge and artificial intelligence (AI), such as predictive models and machine learning.

“By combining expert knowledge, machine learning and industry knowledge we can more accurately assess the future risks of an applicant,” said Morrenhof. “The more data we have from a person or a company, the better we can score them.”

One of the unique selling points of FRISS is that it covers the whole insurance process, from underwriting right the way through to claims. If the claim turns out to be suspicious, FRISS also has a solution for special investigations. Furthermore, FRISS supports insurers with increasing their percentage of STP (straight through processing) applications and claims.

At only 13 years old, the company employs over 150 people and has implemented its solution in 36 countries spread over three continents. But the team at FRISS aren’t stopping there; further expansion is planned. At the end of 2017, FRISS received investments totaling €15 million from US-based venture capital Aquiline Technology Growth and French financial services investor, BlackFin Capital Partners.

“With that money we have done a few things,” said Morrenhof. “We have of course continued our efforts in enhancing our solution to better serve our customers. Apart from that we have also started extending into regions that hold important markets for us, for example France, Germany and North America with new offices in Paris, Cologne and Chicago. We already have customers in these areas here, but the offices help us better serve them. We will also be opening an office in Chile soon to further support the Latin American market.”

In 2019 and beyond FRISS will continue working on three key pillars to further its success, namely explainable AI, collaboration and integration.

“We want to make everything we do with AI as understandable as possible,” said Morrenhof. “For example, as a claim handler you need to be able to explain why a certain claim has a high FRISS score. Someone without any technical knowledge should be able to go into the product and explain what happened and why it is the way it is.”

Morrenhof also believes that collaboration between insurers, through working together and sharing authorized knowledge, is key to success.

“Fraudsters do not stop at one insurance company; they will move to a number of firms and if they are caught, they will just move across borders to continue in another country,” said Morrenhof. “As such, we enable all our products so that insurers can authorize the sharing of information to avoid fraudulent activity.”

The third pillar on FRISS’s 2019 agenda is integration; the company will work together with its system partners such as Guidewire, Duck Creek and Keylane, to enable those working with their systems to immediately see a risk score attached to every claim that comes in. If FRISS is more effectively integrated in these solutions, the experience for the claim handler and the end-customers will be better because they will receive better service as their claims move faster.

“FRISS helps with improving the customer experience because it gives clients the treatment that they deserve,” said Morrenhof. “If you are an honest client with low risk you will go in the fast lane, be accepted for your policy request within seconds or your claim will be settled immediately. On the other hand, those trying to commit fraud will be treated accordingly.”