FORECAST 2025:
GenAI Outlook
FORECAST 2025: GenAI Outlook
Author
January 2025
Generative AI (GenAI) is revolutionizing the life insurance industry. We asked our panel what new GenAI tools their companies have implemented in the past year. The executives were very forthcoming about how they are using these tools and how the introduction and transition are going.
While some insurance companies are just beginning to pilot GenAI projects, others are further along in their implementation journey. Industry executives report using GenAI in various ways, including automating underwriting processes, enhancing risk assessment, streamlining claims management and improving customer experience.
Automation and enhanced risk assessment are a couple of the ways that insurance companies are using GenAI. “At Prudential, while we’ve been utilizing artificial intelligence and automation for several years, we believe AI-based tools will continue to enable us to quickly analyze data, make faster decisions, reduce risk and improve the customer experience,” says Caroline Feeney, EVP & Chief Executive Officer, U.S. Businesses, Prudential Financial.
Feeney gave an example of how GenAI is aiding Prudential through digital transformation. “In our pension risk transfer (PRT) business, we have automated some routine tasks such as ingesting documents, extracting key information and identifying missing information. As a result, there has been a reduction in the time and resources spent on manual processes. This automation has subsequently increased PRT onboarding capacity.”
“Key areas we are looking for AI priorities are around automation opportunities such as testing, technology enablement, marketing, training and operations,” says Denise McCauley, President & Chief Executive Officer, WoodmenLife.
Underwriting Support
GenAI is transforming the underwriting process for life insurance companies. “The implementation of AI-driven models has led to rapidly accelerated medical underwriting decisions with improved accuracy, enhancing the customer experience,” says Feeney. “Additionally, these models have increased conversion rates for Prudential advisors. For example, the overall application process is now 60 percent faster in Prudential’s Individual Life Insurance group and 80 percent of Prudential’s Group Insurance cases are completed in real time.”
“Rather than developing GenAI that would create new data, we are focused on the practical use of existing data by developing AI and machine learning techniques for automated and efficient underwriting, expanding insurance accessibility, and processing and analyzing claims,” says Marc Giguère, President & Chief Executive Officer, Munich Re, U.S. Life and Health.
“Our Integrated Analytics team is constantly innovating and will continue to adapt to technological changes and market needs and introduce new tools that will propel the industry forward,” continues Giguère.
According to Kamilah Williams-Kemp, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Northwestern Mutual, Northwestern Mutual is also using AI to improve underwriting. “We’ve been embracing classical AI and machine learning for years, deploying these innovations to transform the traditional underwriting process to not just be faster, but to deliver better client outcomes,” says Williams-Kemp.
Driving Improvements
Enhancing the customer and agent experience is another area where our panel of executives report using AI. “New York Life has been exploring how AI and predictive models could improve the customer experience and drive operational efficiencies for a while, and we are enabling our employees to harness the power of these technologies,” says Aaron Ball, EVP and Co-Head of the Foundational Business, New York Life. “Most recently, we have invested in use cases for select claims, servicing, sales and marketing functions — the goal being to use GenAI to help transform these functions end to end and drive improvements in our customer and agent experiences.”
“Aflac is in the herd/at par with the industry — both in terms of our approach and the areas where we have deployed AI,” says Virgil Miller, President, Aflac U.S., Aflac. “Currently, we are focusing on the use of AI to improve speed and quality, particularly in our claims experience. We are leveraging machine learning and AI to help automate the adjudication of certain benefits to provide a faster and more consistently accurate experience for our policyholders.”
Chris Blunt, Chief Executive Officer, F&G, reports that F&G is taking a holistic approach to GenAI. “While GenAI is certainly a hot topic, at F&G we are intentionally creating a solid foundation for our team members to safely utilize all things AI,” says Blunt. “Our approach is structured and phased to ensure we effectively integrate AI into our business processes and stay in line with the emerging regulatory front to realize AI’s full potential within F&G.”
“We are investing in training, tools, and risk management frameworks creating an environment for team members where they are safely experimenting, developing use cases, and realizing the value of AI,” Blunt continues. “In this quickly evolving landscape, we are taking a holistic approach to balance risk, opportunity, business value and short- and long-term reward.”
“As our AI journey continues,” says Mike James, Global Chief Sales Officer, NFP, an Aon company, “we are being proactive in understanding its tremendous power. We’re taking time to learn about best practices, compliance matters, ethical considerations and ensuring we don’t compromise our people-first culture. Through a collaboration with marketing, technology, ethics and compliance, and other leaders, we are taking a thoughtful approach driven by our values.”
According to Wade Harrison, EVP & Chief Retail Officer, Protective Life, his organization is using GenAI for increased employee productivity and knowledge management. “We have successfully rolled out Microsoft Co-Pilot across our organization, beginning with a pilot program to pinpoint the most impactful ways it can enhance employees’ daily routines. During the pilot, we provided comprehensive training and support, resulting in high satisfaction among active users.”
Harrison adds, “Building on this success, we are now exploring the use of Co-Pilot for sales and service. Additionally, we completed testing on a custom-developed GenAI solution to improve knowledge management capabilities in operations. The solution is designed to improve employee effectiveness and reduce turnaround times for distribution partners, leading to cost efficiencies and an enhanced distribution experience.”
According to Williams-Kemp, Northwestern Mutual is already seeing success with using GenAI to accelerate servicing and operations. “We’ve been harnessing the power of GenAI to accelerate our servicing and operations, improving the productivity of our customer service representatives (CSRs),” says Williams-Kemp. “And while we’re still in the early stages of that journey, we’re already seeing outstanding early returns on our investments.”
“Through a GenAI-powered tool, our CSRs can now instantly scour a 9,000-page database, finding answers to specific client questions faster than ever before. This is the kind of task our CSRs face every day, dozens of times a day,” Williams-Kemp adds.
“There’s a tendency to think of GenAI solutions in the context of tackling the complex, but it’s often the simple tasks where AI can have the greatest impact on both productivity and customer experience,” says Sarah Mineau, SVP, Life/Health & Investment Planning Services, State Farm Insurance. “Currently, we are seeing success through GenAI tools that assist customers and customer service professionals on a range of needs to more seamlessly and quickly provide answers and direction to customers in real time via chat. We are also using GenAI for coding assist to make our technology and data associates more efficient. Overall, we are taking a customer-centric approach to AI and will focus on incremental changes that will extend our growth, enhance customer and agent experience, and improve operational performance.”
Guard Rails
Many companies note the need for a comprehensive approach to AI. “Ameritas is taking a comprehensive approach to responsible AI governance that goes beyond simply putting the new technologies in place to include user education and training,” Bob Jurgensmeier, Chief Executive Officer, Ameritas Life Insurance Group says. “We’ve implemented an in-house GenAI platform to help associates work more efficiently and introduced a few successful AI-integrated vendor solutions. We continue exploring broader opportunities in this area. We’ve had Developer AI in place for more than a year and are seeing some productivity lift, but not at the levels promised due in part to the kind of software Ameritas uses for core systems.”
Jasmine Jirele, President & Chief Executive Officer, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America says Allianz is using GenAI to drive business outcomes in several ways including distribution, operations and enterprise. “We use a “human-in-the-loop” approach to ensure appropriate guardrails are in place for using GenAI solutions,” says Jirele.
“In addition to the creation of a governance model, we have created a community of practice for GenAI, which started with training at advanced levels,” says Jerry Lyphout, President & Chief Executive Officer, Modern Woodmen of America. “We have identified several use cases and have begun GenAI development in those customer-facing areas with which we will recognize the greatest gains.”
