How AI is Driving Innovation and Customer-Centricity in Insurance
Xinfa Cai, Chief Innovation Officer, AIA Group
Xinfa Cai, Chief Innovation Officer, AIA Group
Xinfa Cai joined AIA in 2024 as Chief Innovation Officer and Group Head of Innovation Office. He leads AIA’s innovation and customer-centricity strategies, leveraging AI, data analytics, and digital marketing to enhance customer experience. Previously, he held senior roles at eBay, Ctrip, and Ping An Group. Xinfa holds degrees in biology, cell biology, computer science, and a DBA from the University of Hong Kong.
In this article, Cai emphasizes AIA’s leadership in leveraging AI, data analytics, and digital strategies to enhance customer experiences and drive innovation.
AI and large language models (LLMs) are reshaping society and leading to exponential growth in applications such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek. AI's wide adoption and awareness have raised consumer expectations for a more personalized experience with immediate support and seamless interactions.
However, using AI to enhance the customer experience requires significant investment in digital capabilities and analytics. AIA spent three years and US$800 million rebuilding our organization’s technology, data and analytics foundations, including a move to cloud computing, which has placed us in a prime position to leverage the true power of AI and Generative AI.
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It may sound counter-intuitive, but AI helps with personalization. When our agents or customer service staff can automate some of their internal tasks, like documentation, they can spend more time engaging with and assisting customers
AIA has already deployed more than 50 Gen AI solutions, which have resulted in tangible improvements in customer satisfaction and loyalty, making us an industry leader.
Building Trust through AI-Driven InteractionsGen AI has enormous potential to reshape the way insurance is delivered, and at AIA, we are leveraging this technology to enhance trust and deepen relationships with our customers.
In Singapore and Thailand, our customer service staff use Microsoft Copilot to summarize customer inquiries during live chats, reducing the time required for each call by 50 percent. This efficiency enables our staff to spend more time on personalized interactions, further strengthening customer relationships.
In Mainland China, we provide personalized training to our agents using Gen AI-empowered roleplay, which involves miming live interactions.
In Korea, we have used Gen AI to improve underwriting and claims processing by summarising complex medical reports for assessors, which cuts time for assessing claims from more than two days to less than 25 minutes.
Balancing Human Expertise and Machine IntelligenceHumans will always play a crucial role in insurance, as only we possess the judgment and expertise to make sensitive claims decisions impacting our customers' lives. Still, AI can help humans work more efficiently.
For instance, we use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to extract critical information from medical documents, expediting underwriting and claims processing while reducing review time by half. However, all critical decisions, particularly rejected claims, undergo manual review to ensure proper assessment.
AIA’s agents play an irreplaceable role in our value chain, creating strong relationships with existing and potential customers. We use AI to make them even more effective. For example, in Thailand, our agents are supported by Gen AI-enabled assistants that provide up-to-date product knowledge and customer policy summaries and help navigate agency processes in real-time.
Breakthrough Technologies and Hyper-PersonalizationIt may sound counter-intuitive, but AI helps with personalization. When our agents or customer service staff can automate some of their internal tasks, like documentation, it means they can spend more time engaging with and assisting customers.
At AIA, we are enhancing our health-related technology to ensure we utilize the best resources to help our customers live Healthier, Longer, Better Lives. Gen AI is central to this healthcare strategy. Investing in health technology and services will enable us to deliver personalized experiences and superior health outcomes for our customers.
We also assist our employees, agents, and partners in utilizing Gen AI to boost their innovation capabilities. By equipping our teams and stakeholders with the AI-related tools and training they need, we empower them to drive innovation and deliver exceptional customer service.
We aim to scale these advanced technologies across the 18 markets we operate in to maximize business value and provide consistent, high-quality service for all our customers.
Ensuring Transparency, Fairness, and Regulatory AlignmentAt AIA, we were early in recognizing that AI carries risks and benefits. In 2021, we employed a Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence policy to ensure fairness and eliminate unintended bias from all our AI use cases. Furthermore, we have established AI Councils throughout our business to enforce our standards. We also provide mandatory training on responsible AI use to ensure compliance with all regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
These measures ensure that AIA’s deployment of advanced technologies like AI is transparent, fair, and aligned with regulatory standards, ultimately enhancing customer trust and satisfaction.
Using AI to Improve the Customer ExperienceWe are committed to increasing the use of AI in customer interactions wherever we see the need to improve our customer experience continuously.
At AIA, we believe that the future of insurance lies in the seamless integration of human expertise and machine intelligence, leading to hyper-personalization and improved health outcomes for all our customers.
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