The bots have arrived at IAG – and they are here to stay. The insurer now has more than 160 automated processes and a spokesman says the role of artificial intelligence and generative AI is growing daily.

“These bots not only support our retail, intermediated and New Zealand divisions, but also our group corporate functions,” they told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“The bots are used for a myriad of activities – such as supporting our claims lodgement process and making the quote process easier and faster. Our automation activities are becoming increasingly intelligent as generative AI has evolved and become embedded.”

The bots complete the equivalent of 500,000 hours of work a year and have made it quicker to serve customers, freeing personnel to focus on higher-value customer-centric activities, IAG says.

In recent years, IAG has made significant investments in technology to lift customer experiences and drive efficiency. “This started with claims, with 99% of claims managed on a single claims platform,” the spokesperson said.

“We then moved to retail distribution, pricing and policy management, through our enterprise platform. And the equivalent distribution, pricing and policy system of record work has now commenced for our intermediated business.”

Also in the intermediated space, IAG has started building its underwriting bench – a platform that will centralise all the information needed by underwriters and allow the use of AI capabilities. 

“Generating quotes for brokers and WFI clients will be done in less time, with fewer manual tasks, and underwriters will have access to all the information within ‘a single pane of glass’,” the spokesperson said.  

IAG says bespoke AI has already increased efficiency in its intermediated business. One tool, called CASI, allows the claims team to access product disclosure statement terms in about three seconds. Before, it could take up to 30 minutes, depending on the type of policy. 

COO Neil Morgan told insuranceNEWS.com.au: “We’ve been delivering back-to-back transformation programs since 2018, building a simplified, modern, cloud-enabled platform that we can then optimise and innovate on top of. 

“The timing of this core transformation with the availability of natural language AI tools creates significant opportunity. We’re already seeing success in the use of GenAI for activities like ingestion of broker requests, faster claims processing and intelligent fraud detection.”

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