Over the past 32 years Netrisk has evolved from a comparison site into a regional technology and financial intermediary operating in six countries and serving roughly 12 million customers annually. Besnyő Márton, Netrisk’s regional director for Austria and Hungary, told Forbes.hu how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the company’s development, sales and customer journeys, and what this means for the Hungarian financial market.
What Netrisk does today
Netrisk is more than an insurance and loan comparison portal: it acts as a technology and marketing company, integrates with insurers’ systems, has contractual partnerships, processes customer data, supports payments and assists in claims handling. Besnyő argues that this complexity offers some protection against full substitution by standalone AI models, because a model would need contracts with every insurer and to comply with local regulation country by country to replace the entire process.
AI adoption and operational impact
Thanks to its IT background, Netrisk was able to integrate AI early and intensively: development cycles can be up to five times faster, and AI-driven services introduced as early as last December significantly changed sales. Concrete examples include:
- AI-assisted product recommendations, OCR document-reading systems and digital contract renewal tools.
- Automatic renewal notices that link customers to a prefilled calculator with a single click, removing manual data entry and making offers and potential savings immediately transparent.
Eighteen percent of Netrisk’s Hungarian sales already come through such automated, AI-supported processes. The company handles 60–80 thousand customer questions monthly. With AI assistance, telephone sales agents today sell three times as many insurance contracts as three years ago.
Opportunities and risks AI brings to the market
Besnyő emphasizes that AI democratizes software development: it makes creating and porting functions between systems faster, but it also lowers barriers for competitors. Netrisk’s strategy is to continually launch new features to keep the barrier to entry high.
Simple price-comparison websites may be threatened by AI that can instantly tell users where to buy a product cheapest. Insurance is more complex: contracts differ, terms are intricate and expertise is required, and an AI model without contractual ties to insurers would still need to route customers to specialized providers to conclude policies.
AI models’ emergence has reduced web traffic by 5–15 percent depending on industry; Besnyő says established brands that have built trust can benefit because fewer visitors may convert at higher rates. He views AI models not as rivals but as new distribution channels—ChatGPT-style models could even recommend Netrisk directly.
Ads, transparency and recommendation monetization
The arrival of paid placements and advertising in AI chat interfaces raises questions. Besnyő notes that paid prominence in search engines is not new and that similar mechanisms are appearing in AI products, although financial providers are currently excluded from some placements. He believes paid recommendations need not necessarily be manipulative if transparent, and could even encourage more deliberate comparison by consumers. Still, operators of chatbots will need to monetize their services, and how they do so will be watched closely.
Consumer behavior: price sensitivity vs. bank switching
Netrisk data show Hungarian consumers are highly price-sensitive in insurance: savings of 10–20 thousand HUF can motivate them to switch, while in Austria the threshold is about 400 euros (~150 thousand HUF). Key figures cited by Besnyő:
- The average annual mandatory motor third-party liability insurance (kgfb) in Austria is about 1,200 euros (450–480 thousand HUF); in Hungary the price is roughly one-ninth of that thanks to strong insurer competition.
- An average Hungarian home insurance premium is 64–68 thousand HUF per year.
- Switching via online comparison can yield 40–45 percent savings on a new contract; according to the Hungarian National Bank, while premiums have fallen significantly, the content of services has increased by an average of 25 percent.
By contrast, bank services show a paradox: a Deloitte study finds 94 percent of Hungarians are dissatisfied with their bank, but only 6 percent are willing to switch—usually when taking out a loan. Besnyő notes that refinancing consumer loans taken one to two years ago could save customers about 900 thousand to 1 million HUF over five years.
AI and the future of jobs
Besnyő expects AI to raise the value of expertise while making digital support indispensable: employees will need technological tools to remain effective. He forecasts that in five years people will probably work more efficiently but with fewer headcount in some areas. Currently Netrisk is hiring due to traffic growth, but the overall shape of roles and processes will change.
International expansion and data assets
AI also simplifies international expansion by making it easier to integrate systems written in different programming languages. A solution developed in Austria can be ported to Hungary more quickly. Besnyő emphasizes that Netrisk’s 32-year history, accumulated data assets and brand recognition provide competitive advantages that are harder to copy than pure technology.
What customers will experience
Customers will benefit from faster and simpler processes, but more importantly from much more personalized contracts and offers. AI can process the accumulated data companies hold and identify individual needs—for example, suggesting wildlife coverage for customers in regions with frequent animal collisions, or timely refinancing offers based on financial behaviour. Besnyő sees significant medium- and long-term commercial potential in such use cases.
Conclusion
For Netrisk, AI accelerates development, increases sales efficiency and enables personalization, while creating new competitive dynamics and monetization questions. The complexity of insurance distribution and contractual relationships still protects intermediaries to a degree, but simple comparison models and some online channels face real disruption from AI. Meanwhile, Hungarian consumers remain very price-sensitive in insurance but relatively inert regarding banking relationships—an imbalance that creates both opportunities and responsibilities for market participants.
