New technologies such as cognitive and personality analysis can help insurers more accurately profile mental health claimants and better handle claims, a KPMG research paper says.

Personality traits indicate a person’s likelihood to make a claim as well as their recovery time, according to the paper, which was presented at the Actuaries Summit in Melbourne last week.

Applications such as IBM’s Watson can capture an individual’s personality traits from as little as 600 words of spoken or written input. It removes the possibility of human error or subjectivity.

“Good claims managers analyse conversations and written information to understand personality traits,” the paper says. “However, cognitive technology has the ability to automatically provide a claims manager with more timely and accurate analysis of the person on claim.”

Personality trait information can also assist with mental health claims in relation to “trust and engagement”.

Researchers believe it is possible to improve engagement by matching an individual, based on their personality, to a health professional they are likely to trust and respect.

Online therapy providers such as talkspace.com already match clients with therapists based on personality traits to optimise outcomes.

Language, tone and sentiment analysis through cognitive computing can be similarly utilised to improve interactions with claims staff.

Rather than sampling a few calls per month per employee, such tools can review all interactions, allowing insurers to identify specific training needs for each claims professional.

The report says insurers could use this data to determine which customer personality a claims professional is best at managing, and also make sure they do not repeatedly ask the same question, which can lead to distress.

Businesses need actuaries to understand this changing technology, KPMG says.