Cinnamon AI, Artificial Intelligence Startup, Issues Shares to Dai-ichi Life Insurance Through Third Party Allotment

Cinnamon Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Miku Hirano; hereinafter “Cinnamon AI”), one of the Japan’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) solution provider, announced that it raises 500 million yen (USD 3.67 million) in funds from The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited (Headquarters: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, President: Seiji Inagaki, hereinafter, Dai-ichi Life Insurance) through a third party allotment. By leveraging the consumer’s knowledge, we aim to realize new business structures in this AI era, as well as continue to strengthen our AI consulting, AI products, and organizational structure to innovate our clients’ core business and promote digital transformation within the insurance space.

＜Promoting business synergy: Revolutionizing the life insurance value chain through AI utilization＞

Cinnamon AI will aim to establish business synergy with Dai-ichi Life Insurance to realize drastic changes within the value chain of the life insurance industry through the third-party allotment.

Cinnamon AI currently provides Dai-ichi Life Insurance with AI technology that converts handwritten medical certificates, which include specialized medical terminology, that are submitted when applying for insurance premiums and benefits (unstructured data) into text data (structured data). Such unstructured data can potentially be utilized for various areas of Dai-ichi Life Insurance’s business, such as consulting sales and contract management operations, as well as compliance and other areas of quality management. By striving for a “buddy” relationship between “AI” and “humans”, Cinnamon AI aims to realize more effective and efficient operations within the value chain.

In addition, through exchange of human resources between Dai-ichi Life Insurance, Cinnamon AI looks to utilize its advanced AI technology and speed, as a start-up, to support human resource development among the members of Dai-ichi Life Insurance. Through the operational synergy with Dai-ichi Life Insurance, Cinnamon AI aims to expand the experiences with Dai-ichi Life Insurance to advance digital transformation across all players in the insurance industry.

As we faced a growing need to adopt work style reforms while ensuring fast and precise payment of premiums and benefits to our customers, Cinnamon AI developed for us an AI-OCR engine that helped us to make great strides in making our operations more efficient. In the development of the engine, Cinnamon AI provided not only advanced AI technology, but also consulting surrounding business integration and design, such as key consideration for optimal user experience and interface design. This cooperative development process has pushed us to consider AI adoption in other areas of our business. As such, we see great potential in the adoption of technology, such as machine learning, to replace areas of high costs, such as customer service operations. We see Cinnamon AI’s technology and consulting as our foundation to build a stronger business and increase our competitiveness in the industry.

In addition, through our past initiatives, we look to Cinnamon AI, not only as a partner with advanced AI technology, but also as a business partner that will proactively deepen its understanding of our business and be able to lead various projects by providing us with new ideas for AI adoption and continuing to advance the quality of its AI.

In order to adopt AI in business, it is not just the responsibility of the AI vendor to develop the AI engine, but also the responsibility of the members of the company to be able to understand and utilize the AI without question. We are confident that with Cinnamon AI proactively proposing new ideas to utilize AI, members of our organization are deepening their understanding of AI technology and will ultimately be able to take advantage of AI technologies, just as we have done with information technology.

Through the strengthening of the partnership with Cinnamon AI, we look forward to making our operations across multiple areas of our business more efficient utilizing Cinnamon AI’s advanced AI technology. With more industries adopting AI, we aim to work with Cinnamon AI to lead digital transformation with the life insurance space.

Currently, in 2022, the life insurance industry is in a time of drastic change. The industry is expanding from the conventional mindset of insuring for potential risks, such as sickness and injury, to the mindset of prevention, which includes medical care and wellbeing.

In the realm of digital transformation, we can expect to see revolutionary change in areas such as maximization of customer touch points, personalization of insurance products, and optimization of sales activities and procedures. We at Cinnamon AI have advanced research and development with the thought that consolidation and optimization of knowledge is the key in realizing said revolutionary changes.

Our relationship with Dai-ichi Life Insurance began in 2017, when we were able to support Dai-ichi Life Insurance as the company first began to share its interest in AI and started to consider an AI adoption project. While we had very few prior examples of past AI implementation projects, Dai-ichi Life Insurance reached out to us, a newly established start-up, to launch the project and help us grow. We are truly thankful for Dai-ichi Life Insurance for providing us with such an opportunity. Since then, Dai-ichi Life Insurance has adopted our AI-OCR engine, Flax Scanner, and we are grateful to have been able to contribute to the company’s digital transformation efforts.

Going forward, we look to promote digital transformation across the industry by leveraging our knowledge surrounding unstructured data through our Knowledge Hub technology and providing said technology across the insurance space.

In addition, due to its crucial role in society, insurance industry players are also recognized for its responsibility in areas such as diversity, sustainability, and resilience. We believe that AI can also play a role in said fields and are currently planning projects to advance AI adoption.

Through cooperation with Dai-ichi Life Insurance’s efforts to accelerate innovation in the InsTech space, Cinnamon AI aims to create new business structures by leveraging knowledge held by the end users and establish itself as the “Sherpa” to lead companies in the insurance industry looking to realize dramatic growth, by providing advanced AI technology solutions.

【The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited: Corporate Details】

Company name: The Dai-ichi Life Insurance Company, Limited

URL: https://www.dai-ichi-life.co.jp

Address:1-13-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo

Established in: September 1902

Representative(s): Representative Director, President Seiji Inagaki