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The insurance industry has long recognized the potential of AI and machine learning to enhance efficiency and improve the customer experience.
Despite the complexity and time required to integrate these technologies, the urgency is clear—with 80 percent of insurance executives noting the growing inseparability of business and technology strategies.
To meet evolving needs, carriers should streamline technology pilots by engaging non-business partners early, clearly identifying success metrics, and working with AI champions.
Here’s how to get started.
Engage non-business partners from the start
From the nascent phase of AI and machine learning programs to the final stage of implementation, it is critical to engage broader stakeholders at every step.
The first step is consulting a wide range of stakeholders to identify the need or use case for AI or machine learning pilots, which is ideally tied to firm-wide priorities. For many, these needs could include processing an ever-increasing amount of unstructured and structured data sources—in turn driving efficiencies, identifying risk signals and links between data, and supporting programmatic auditing capabilities.
During the pilot phase, even if this period can sometimes involve lower levels of production scrutiny, teams should gather full requirements and stand up a governance protocol on the assumption that the pilot will be successful and deploy broadly.
To effectively do this work in parallel with the tactical pilot, include representatives from the governance teams through pilot, development, and implementation phases. This should include representatives from legal, regulatory, and compliance. Doing so can help you get ahead of friction points and more efficiently make decisions.
Get disciplined and deliberate on success metrics
When it comes to AI and machine learning pilots, striving for perfection can get in the way of progress. Companies should focus on setting realistic and achievable goals, whether around accuracy, user engagement, or enhancement requirements. To determine metrics, consider the minimum requirements that need to be met for the pilot to move forward.
Once pilot metrics are set, be intentional about adhering to them. Building structured mechanisms for tracking these metrics is imperative. In addition to recurring touchpoints with the pilot team, consider other tactics such as surveys and anonymous feedback forms. These tools can help to drive deliberate decision making around how to proceed and when to move from pilot to full deployment.
Find your champions
Scaling an AI pilot is a critical inflection point, and the process calls for a deliberate approach.
Technology champions play a crucial role in driving broader AI and machine learning adoption. Seek out these champions across the business and invest in them, whether through access to white glove technical support or real-world examples of how the tool improved their job. They can then inspire increased buy-in from colleagues.
To broaden their impact, look for any opportunity to have champions get in front of colleagues. A single launch email or training session is not enough. Have champions speak at regularly scheduled team meetings, hold office hours, and offer one-on-one discussions with colleagues.
Additionally, include champions in feedback loops and outcome reporting. While doing so helps with accountability, it can also ensure champions are celebrated.
As adoption rates increase, continue to add to your ambassador pool. You can never have too many champions advocating for these innovative solutions.
Bringing best practices to life
At Guardian, we see AI as a way to unlock more strategic and creative work for our colleagues that can differentiate us in the marketplace. Because we are a mutual company, we focus on long-term value creation and make sure our investments support our strategy of wowing customers.
Underwriting is core to this work, and we are exploring ways to make faster and better underwriting decisions for individual life and disability insurance. This includes a partnership with Sixfold, using generative AI to enhance individual underwriting, which underscores these strategies in action.
During the Sixfold pilot, early engagement with non-underwriting and business partners helped streamline the AI governance review process, speeding up the pilot launch. The team focused on key metrics like data extraction accuracy, information triage, and quick case assessment—and found that they could reduce underwriter review time by 50 percent.
To ensure viability of Sixfold’s technical solutions by our data science team, we benchmarked a large language model internally—a step too often overlooked. As a result, colleagues felt more confident engaging with a third-party platform.
With the pilot completed in just six months, we are expanding the program to support more individual underwriting cases across multiple business lines. The underwriters involved in the pilot will be crucial in this expansion.
Another strategic priority is helping our field force be more efficient and grow their business. An upcoming pilot program with TIFIN AG is designed to do just that—helping our financial professionals analyze client behaviors and provide recommendations on opportunities to drive deeper engagement and consolidate assets.
These efforts are already having a measurable and positive impact on our teams and the people they serve. However, it is just the beginning—the foundational best practices established through these pilots will help Guardian accelerate transformation and capitalize on AI advancements.
Get started today
As carriers strive to cut through the noise and drive faster, smarter uses of AI to achieve their goals, these strategies can help expedite pilots. Further, they also enable carriers to better assess the value of new AI and machine learning tools, effectively measure their impact, and expedite rollouts when ready.
Ultimately, AI itself isn’t the innovation—it’s one tool that supports innovation. From enabling colleagues to be more productive to moving forward with transformational projects, AI is helping differentiate Guardian and deliver on our mission to inspire well-being.
Guardian’s Strategic Focus on Supporting Members through Wellness Partnerships