The insurance industry is being challenged by increased adoption of automated decision-making. AI advances could conceivably automate everything: marketing, customer service, underwriting and claims management alike. However, such automation challenges consumer trust, as there is considerable public and scholarly debate over the ‘black box’ character of many algorithms. Insurance being a business of trust, this suggests a dilemma. One suggested solution involves adopting algorithms in a transparent manner. This article reports a study of how Swedish insurers deal with this dilemma, based on (i) eight interviews with insurance professionals representing four companies with a joint market share of 45–50% of the Swedish property insurance market and (ii) a questionnaire answered by 71 professionals in a Swedish insurance company. The results show that while transparency is seen as potentially valuable, most Swedish insurers do not use it to gain a competitive advantage or identify clear limits to transparency and are not using AI extensively.

保险业正面临越来越多地采用自动化决策的挑战。可以想象，人工智能的进步可以使一切自动化：营销、客户服务、承保和索赔管理等。然而，这种自动化挑战了消费者的信任，因为对于许多算法的“黑匣子”特征存在相当多的公众和学术争论。保险是一项信托业务，这表明了一个两难境地。一种建议的解决方案涉及以透明的方式采用算法。本文报告了一项关于瑞典保险公司如何应对这一困境的研究，基于 (i) 对代表四家公司的保险专业人士进行的八次访谈，这些公司的共同市场份额为瑞典财产保险市场的 45-50%，以及 (ii) 一份回答的问卷由瑞典保险公司的 71 名专业人员组成。