Gen AI, digital infrastructure foundational to enhancing customer experience: FWD
September 26 2024 by InsuranceAsia News
The FWD Group chief digital officer Ryan Kim shares how AI and technology can benefit insurers’ operations and distribution processes.
Data analytics and AI architecture are equally important for insurers’ operations and customer experience, Ryan Kim, group chief digital officer, FWD Group, told InsuranceAsia News (IAN).
“Digital technologies and generative AI are important to enhance the customer experience,” Kim told IAN.
“We started our AI journey in 2019 and began exploring generative AI opportunities in 2022, recognising its great potential for the insurance industry,” he said.
The carrier has recently introduced a generative AI (Gen AI) platform for distribution, agency management, customer support, marketing, and internal operations.
Another recent development by the company is a generative AI assistant and a virtual avatar training bot for the carrier’s agents in the Philippines which the company is planning to scale to other markets.
It is designed “to streamline operations, enhance efficiency and enable agents to provide real-time insight with accurate information to our customers”.
The insurer is also planning to introduce generative AI voice-enabled customer service in specific markets.
“Our extensive testing in this area has yielded positive feedback from multiple stakeholders, reinforcing our commitment to leveraging advanced technologies to enhance our services,” Kim said.
Claims and underwriting
The carrier has launched an AI-driven claims model that allows it to make instant decisions on low-risk claims, cutting down the assessment time from days to under a minute and it has implemented an automated underwriting system supported by advanced AI technologies to streamline and speed up the process.
“By minimising and refining the questions posed to customers, we gather more accurate information. Improved risk assessment capabilities also expedite our underwriting,” Kim said.
One of the most recent examples of how the company applies Gen AI is FWD Cube, an app that integrates the entire agent journey – from recruitment and training to prospecting, sales, and client management – into a unified seller experience.
“Utilising the latest generative AI technologies, FWD Cube provides an innovative training model where digital humans will pose questions of varying difficulty to agents. This allows our agents to gain experience across different scenarios, improving their customer service skills,” Kim explained.
Tech partnerships
Another way of improving operations, including underwriting and claims processing, is partnering with tech companies. In February, the carrier announced an extended partnership with Microsoft with a four-year agreement to provide access to the latest generative AI innovations.
FWD plans to apply Gen AI to enhance the customer experience and improve operations in areas including acquisition, marketing, channel, and agent performance, underwriting, claims processing, and customer service.
“By minimising and refining the questions posed to customers, we gather more accurate information. Improved risk assessment capabilities also expedite our underwriting.” Ryan Kim, FWD
“This collaboration marries FWD’s pioneering spirit in Asia in some of the fastest growing insurance markets in the world, with the global scale and skill that Microsoft brings in engineering and AI. We’re excited to harness more next-generation innovations to develop new industry standards that we believe will shape the insurance journey of the future.” Kim said.
The carrier also emphasised the importance of extensively using the cloud.
Cloud first
In May, the insurer signed a five-year agreement for technology services with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of its cloud-first strategy. The agreement will allow AWS to continue to host core business applications, ranging from finance to customer and insurance agent interfaces. The extended collaboration with AWS will also provide FWD with greater agility, scalability, and resilience.
At the end of 2023, 97% of FWD Group’s applications were migrated to the cloud – up from 27% as of December 31, 2020 – with 93% of applications targeted for retirement decommissioned.
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