Hinesh Chauhan
TAL has announced an ambitious expansion of its strategic partnership with Microsoft, marking the Australian life insurer’s largest ever technology deal.
The new five-year agreement will accelerate TAL’s advanced cloud and AI capabilities through infrastructure and skills investment to support employees in delivering relevant, accessible life insurance and retirement income solutions.
Hinesh Chauhan, Chief Information Officer at TAL, said: “We’re investing in the tech and in building skills that will help our people respond to the next generation needs of Australians.”
“Expanding our longstanding partnership with Microsoft means we can significantly scale and speed up our innovation in products and services all underpinned by TAL’s principles for ethical and responsible AI, ensuring a secure operating environment for our customers, partners and people.”
Georgina Croft, Chief Claims Officer, TAL said: “Life insurance is deeply human. Customers contact us during some of the most challenging times of their lives, as they navigate illness, injury or loss.”
“Our people are shaping the AI tools that enable them to be fully present with customers and deliver a compassionate high-quality experience,” she said.
Microsoft will jointly invest in TAL’s engineering capability to consolidate TAL’s data on Azure and build a suite of AI tools.
TAL’s push into AI is already delivering real benefits to customers and employees, including:
- TAL’s chat-based knowledge assistant that is delivering fast, accurate answers to claims employees by tapping into the company’s knowledge base. Since launching, it has responded to over 37,000 claims-related queries, saving an average of 7 minutes per question and earning 93% positive user feedback. Following its success with claims consultants, TAL has now scaled this solution across HR and customer service teams.
- TAL’s AI-powered post-call summarisation tool, integrated with its core claims system, automatically transcribes and summarises claims-related calls in real time. This allows claims consultants to stay fully focused on supporting customers during conversations and review notes afterward. Since launching, the tool has processed and summarised over 120,000 claims-related calls.
Investing in people and skills
As part of the expanded collaboration, TAL will work with Microsoft to design programs that build AI skills across the organisation.
“AI is intuitive for some, newer for others and we’re focused on closing that gap, giving employees an edge in their careers and ensuring they’re set-up to safely use data and AI to help customers and innovate for the future,” said Chauhan.
“This is about building experiences customers love, and that our people love to build. Our expanded collaboration will also see our engineers working with Microsoft’s engineers and scientists to develop solutions together to deliver impact faster.”
Duncan Taylor, General Manager for Financial Services at Microsoft ANZ, said the expanded partnership highlights how technology and skills can work together to drive meaningful transformation.
“By unifying its data in Azure and weaving AI into the fabric of its operations, TAL is reimagining how an insurer works from the inside out,” said Taylor. “It’s exciting to see them innovating at this scale and we’re proud to support TAL as it sets a new standard for customer focused innovation in life insurance.”