By FINTECH Books Contributor, Alberto Chierici It is challenging to see what conversational business can offer to the insurance industry in the big noise caused by a positive, though too enthusiastic press. As Facebook Messenger’s David Marcus said at the VIVA Tech Paris in the summer of 2016, “Chatbots were over-hyped recently but are under-hyped for the long run.” It would be worth exploring the development of conversational business, structuring our investigation into five parts. Initially to find out why conversational business is emerging now, what are the social and technological trends crystallising this opportunity. By demystifying artificial intelligence and the current state of the art we can understand what we can achieve now. With the right framework, we can look at the good and bad use cases for chatbots. This would set the scene for insurance as the perfect use case for chatbots and show why chatbots help insurers achieve the most pressing topics in their agendas: moving towards customer-centric models, knowing their customers better (behaviour, fraud, and the way people want to be talked to), disintermediation for some countries or empowering agents in other countries, achieving operational efficiencies. Will customers interact with technology by video, voice or something else yet to be invented? The key to staying relevant is by investing in technologies that help businesses to know their customers intimately.