Pan-Asian life insurance business FWD Group has signed a four-year agreement with Microsoft to enhance artificial intelligence (AI)-driven insurance experiences.
The extended partnership will provide access to the latest generative AI innovations while also maintaining support for FWD Group’s cloud-first technology strategy.
By utilising the American technology major‘s Azure OpenAI Service and other innovations that are enterprise-grade, FWD Group aims to drive its generative AI initiatives.
Besides, FWD Group intends to benefit from the private networking, monitoring, and security capabilities of Microsoft Azure and its advanced AI models.
Established in 2013, FWD Group offers propositions and easy-to-understand products, supported by digital technology to make the insurance journey easier, faster, and smoother.
The firm is said to have over 11 million customers across 10 markets.
FWD Group chief digital officer Ryan Kim said: “Digital innovation has always been core to FWD’s vision of changing the way people feel about insurance.
“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.”
According to the Hong Kong-based company, it is working to improve the customer experience and its operations in areas such acquisition, marketing, channel and agent performance, underwriting, claims, and customer service.
Furthermore, FWD Group is an early adopter of Copilot for Microsoft 365. The firm started its AI journey in 2019 and currently has nearly 200 active AI models applied across its business, with more than 600 use cases.
Microsoft worldwide financial services corporate vice president Bill Borden said: “AI is driving transformation across the financial services industry, opening new opportunities for innovation and business growth with agility and at scale.
“We are thrilled to strengthen our AI partnership with FWD by offering Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot for Microsoft 365 capabilities to enable world-class customer experiences and operations securely and responsibly.”
