How Aviva Are Putting AI into Practice, to transform service and their staff job security
When you listen to most conversations about AI in protection, you hear a lot of theory and not much practical detail. A recent conversation with Robert Morrison, Chief Underwriter at Aviva was refreshingly different. What struck me was not simply that Aviva is deploying AI, it was the clarity of the thinking behind what they are doing and the way they have built a long-term plan that puts customers, advisers and staff at the centre.
Morrison began by stepping back to the start of the journey. He said, “When you think about the very first part of onboarding for customers, it is really important to us that we support advisers in a way of being able to give them what they want when they want it.” This is the front end of the process. Aviva has spent years refining the application journey. Robert explained they are “well over 80 percent in terms of being able to automate,” supported by a rules engine that responds to the information customers and advisers enter. This is not simple straight through processing. It is a system designed to do the heavy lifting, so advisers get quicker decisions without constantly chasing underwriters.
When a case cannot pass straight through, it is usually because the situation is genuinely complex. Morrison explained these are often cases where “customers rightly just do not know enough about that condition” for Aviva to make an immediate decision. These are the kinds of medical disclosures we all recognise. Serious cancers. Heart attacks. Heart failure. Conditions where a GP report is needed and where the information arrives in a raw and often overwhelming format.
This is where the new summarisation tool comes in. Robert described the challenge well. “If you think there are over 200 different types of cancer with different stages, gradings and so on, the underwriter gets presented with a plethora of facts and information and they have to distil through that incredibly lengthy report to get to what the salient facts are.” The tool changes that. “It essentially reads the report and summarises the salient points, so the underwriter does not have to spend the same amount of time reviewing a lot of insignificant information to get to the nub of what they are interested in.”
This has the potential to reshape the flow of complex underwriting. The system is now live, after 18 months in development and testing, to support underwriters rather than replace them. This will make the role of those underwriters who remain even more specialist. For others, as I identified in my column yesterday there will be plenty of other ways they can move their skills into new and exciting areas.
This is exactly the direction the industry needs to move. AI should remove the repetitive work so that expert human judgement is used where it adds value, not spent on tasks machines can already handle more consistently.
Aviva is not stopping with underwriting. Claims are following the same pattern. Years ago they began experimenting with analytics to help claims teams identify straightforward cases. That work has now matured. Robert explained that Aviva has “run complex analytics across thousands of claims” and built models that can make immediate decisions where the evidence is clear. This allows Aviva to “automatically accept around 60 percent of death claims.”
He shared an example that says more than any technical explanation. A bereaved customer called Aviva with minimal information. The person handling the claim checked the policy, looked at the details provided and then said, “Your claim is paid. I just need to get the details to transfer the money to you.” That is the impact. The reassurance comes instantly. The money can follow soon after. Families in shock do not want to wait weeks for a decision that could have been made in minutes.
Robert made the point that matters most. “If it took you five days to get them the money, they do not bother about that. They know it is coming. That is the key point for customers.” This is where AI delivers something human. It removes uncertainty at a moment when people need clarity, not complexity.
The same summarisation technology used for underwriting will also be deployed on critical illness claims. The principle is simple. Use AI to extract the core facts from long medical documents. Present underwriters and claims specialists with clear information. Speed up decisions without lowering standards. This is the point many people in the debate miss. AI does not have to reduce quality. It can increase it by allowing experts to focus on the parts of the job where their judgement matters most.
What impressed me most in the conversation was the scale of Aviva’s commitment to helping staff adapt. This is not a company treating AI as a bolt on. Robert talked me through Aviva Quantum, their data science function. It has been running for around eight years. During that time Aviva has partnered with Cambridge University and now works with the Alan Turing Institute. More importantly, they have developed a data science family of “almost 1,300 individuals,” which surprised me. This includes machine learning specialists, AI engineers and advanced analytics teams. There is an Aviva University. There are apprenticeships. There are graduate programmes. People inside the business are moving into these roles.
Robert put it plainly. “It is part of our DNA now.” That is the difference between firms that will lead this transition and firms that will struggle with it. AI is not simply a piece of technology. It is a shift in how work is organised. Aviva is investing in people as much as in systems. They are building the capacity to evolve rather than hoping the change will move slowly. It will not.
This is why the work Aviva is doing deserves credit. It is easy to talk about AI in protection. It is harder to implement it in a way that improves outcomes for consumers, reduces friction for advisers and strengthens the capability of staff. Aviva is doing that work. Faster onboarding. Faster decisions. Faster reassurance for families. Better use of expert judgement. And a long-term commitment to the people who make the business work.
In creating this summary of all the positive things being done it would be wrong for me not to recognise that Aviva have suffered with some long delays recently but the new system which went fully live a week ago should rapidly reduce these. While the current delays may be frustrating, the above outlines the case for deep long-term relationships with Aviva based on their investment in the tools to deliver a better future for advisers, their policyholders and the industry overall.
In the next article, I will look at what the wider adoption of AI in protection could mean for consumers as a whole. There are real opportunities for innovation in how life insurance is designed and delivered. There are also real risks that must be handled carefully. But as Aviva have shown, if you get the planning right, AI can be used to improve the whole system rather than diminish it.
