(Bloomberg) – Frustrated with automated answeringmachines before you finally get to speak with a customer servicerepresentative?

When it comes to insurance, you'll just as likely end up dealingwith a robot as a human within three years, according to asurvey by Accenture Plc.

About two-thirds of insurers already use artificialintelligence-based "virtual assistants," the consultingfirm said in the report, which was published on Wednesday. Of theexecutives who took part in the survey, 85 percent said they planto invest "significantly" in AI in the next three years.

More automation to cut costs

"It's coming pretty quickly," John Cusano, global head ofAccenture's insurance practice, said in a telephone interview. "Oneof the first services to be managed differently will be routineinquiries about the status of claims or bills, which in the pasthave been handled by call centers."

A combination of price pressure and ultra-low interest rates isforcing insurers to cut costs to preserve their profit margins.Introducing more automation is one way of achieving this, whilealso satisfying a greater demand for digital products and to fendoff competition from FinTech startups that also offer insuranceproducts.

Allianz SE, for example, is digitalizing policyunderwriting and claims handling as part of a plan to achieve $1.1billion of productivity gains in 2018.

Flexible technology

"In the U.S., major insurers such as Allstate and Geico havealready launched virtual assistants," Cusano said. "As Google,Apple, Samsung and Amazon push virtual-assistance products, it willhelp spread their use in the industry."

Insurance companies will spend on average $90 million onartificial-intelligence technologies by 2020, according to researchfrom Tata Consultancy Services. The IT consulting firm forecasts ina study that insurers will place fourth behind telecommunications($131 million), high tech ($119 million), and banking ($99 million)in AI spending by the end of the decade.

Geico, the U.S. insurer owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., uses aa virtual assistant for its mobile application calledKate, according to the Accenture report. Kate can answer basicquestions like "What is the current balance on my auto insurancepolicy?" or "When is my next payment due?", the report showed.

Lemonade Inc., an insurance startup in theU.S., has promised to "deliver instant online insurance byreplacing brokers and bureaucracy with bots," according to theAccenture report.

"There's an opportunity to add AI to the back-end transactionsystems," Cusano said. "This will create a need to clean up olderand less flexible technology and will give startups the advantageof being able to build that from scratch."

Tech will 'completely reshape' insurance in next 5 years

Rafts of industries have adopted artificial intelligence todevelop products ranging from self-driving carsto software that can help asset managers analyze huge amounts ofdata. More than a quarter of insurance-company chiefs saytechnology will "completely reshape" their industry in the nextfive years, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said in a survey ofinsurance CEOs published in February.

Related: 'Robot' processes with 'smart' software could helpinsurers

"The real value of automation is to take care of routine tasks,freeing up employees to deal with more complex issues," Cusanosaid. "While it's going to change the way work is done at insurersand their agents, it's debatable whether this will lead to asmaller workforce."