Suncorp announces five-year partnership with Microsoft to accelerate the use of AI and cloud to transform insurance

Suncorp has announced an important five-year partnership with Microsoft aimed at revolutionising the insurance industry through the accelerated use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and public cloud.

Suncorp and Microsoft will extend an existing partnership to more quickly integrate AI at scale across the insurer’s operations. The program is designed to improve the experience Suncorp delivers to customers and for its own people in their day-to-day work.

As one of the first financial services organisations in Australia to successfully migrate more than 90 per cent of its technology workloads out of data centres and into public cloud environments, Suncorp is well positioned to embrace the latest AI capabilities. It began experimenting with large language models before ChatGPT was widely released and is now actively exploring 120 GenAI use cases across its operations, with 20 of these slated to be deployed in the current financial year.

One example already deployed is Smart Knowledge, which uses thousands of procedures, underwriting guidelines and knowledge articles to deliver relevant information at the right time to Suncorp’s contact centre teams to support customer interactions.

The insurer has also deployed a solution that uses Azure OpenAI Service to produce a simplified, easy to digest status summary of an insurance claim for employees, including summarising next steps to progress the claim. This innovation has reduced the time claims managers spend searching across systems, resulting in between five and 30 minutes saved per claim review depending on claim complexity.

“It’s very exciting to see GenAI move from experimentation phase to full scale production across the enterprise and start to have a real impact for our customers and our people,” said Adam Bennett, Chief Information Officer at Suncorp.

Exceptional collaboration from the cross functional teams at Suncorp and Microsoft has enabled the insurer to move quickly from assessment to development, testing and production across a range of AI initiatives.

“The pace we were able to move was unprecedented and is a testament to the commitment throughout all levels of both organisations,” Mr Bennett added.

To support the responsible roll out of AI, Suncorp has an AI Steering Committee to centralise governance and approval of all use cases, ensure the ethical use of AI, and adopt appropriate risk controls before production.

“It has been really impressive to see the responsible and sophisticated approach Suncorp has taken in understanding how AI can be used to fuel innovation and to transform the way its people work,” said Steven Worrall, CVP, Microsoft ANZ, Microsoft.

Further to the exploration of business-specific use cases, Suncorp has deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot to improve the day-to-day working experience for specific teams across the organisation. The use of Copilots is a key part of Suncorp’s AI enablement plan and is being accompanied by extensive training and support. This includes Suncorp’s company-wide AI+U virtual learning series designed to ensure everyone in the business can better understand and start using AI-based tools.

“This initiative is not just about technology, it’s about building the future of insurance, and our people are at the heart of this transformation,” said Mr Bennett. 

“AI is empowering our employees, making them better equipped to deliver exceptional customer outcomes while also gaining more satisfaction from their work by reducing time spent on mundane tasks.”