RENFROE CEO Austin Renfroe on Thursday partnered with YuLife CMO Lauren Berkemeyer to discuss how digital innovation is transforming the insurance industry. The two shared the stage at the ITC Japan conference in Tokyo, where they gave their thoughts on emerging digital trends in the claims space and insurance risk management.

"Technology is great, but it's also a double-edge sword," Renfroe told the audience to start. "A lot of carriers use technology to streamline claims workflows...and that's fantastic. But a lot of the time you lose the human element when you do that."

Renfroe shared a scenario that many in the audience were familiar with: an endless gauntlet of phone trees and chatbots that customers have to navigate just to get an actual human on the phone. Renfroe says that proper implementation of technology comes down to bad workflows versus good workflows.

"A bad workflow is one where you can see everything that's going on," he said. "A good workflow is one that is magic. If you've ever purchased something from Amazon or you've ever ordered a car from Uber, you have no idea how that actually happened. You just press a button on your phone and it appears.

"So what you want to do with technology [in claims] is you want it to support the customer service process. You don't want it to stand in the way of the customer service process."