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.”

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Hinesh Chauhan

TAL has announced a new three-year strategic agreement with Microsoft, accelerating its commitment to using the latest technology to transform its service and operations to deliver faster, better experiences for customers and partners, and its people.

The agreement builds on the two organisations’ longstanding partnership, expanding the life insurer’s access to new technologies including Azure OpenAI Service and supercharging its internal engineering capabilities.

Hinesh Chauhan, Chief Information Officer at TAL said, “Our partnership with Microsoft is an investment in advanced technology to make the experience our customers, partners, and employees have with us, better.”

“This agreement demonstrates how TAL is adopting technology to lead on digital in the life insurance sector. The partnership approach allows us to benefit from Microsoft’s leading AI technologies like Copilot for Microsoft 365 while also collaborating closely to develop our own solutions for our customers, partners, and employees.”

Steven Worrall, Managing Director at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, said, “Our continued collaboration with TAL highlights the incredible potential of AI, cloud computing and data to transform life insurance in Australia. The company has already gained a first-mover advantage in generative AI adoption through our Copilot for Microsoft 365 Early Access Program, and we are excited to explore more ways to enhance customer engagement and enrich employee experiences.”

Building differentiated solutions for employees and customers

The new agreement expands TAL’s ability to harness generative AI to enhance customer and employee experiences.

With the addition of Azure OpenAI, TAL’s engineering team is developing strong use cases across its business, where benefits to employees, customers and partners can be realised at scale and safely.

One use case is focused on streamlining insurance claims processing for customers and employees. Developed using Azure OpenAI Service, the ‘Claims Assist Knowledge Search’ is a search assistant for TAL’s Claims and Customer Service teams to tap into TAL’s knowledge bank, and help them respond to customer queries faster. The life insurer is also developing a solution that automates manual indexing of emails using a combination of AI and robotics to improve efficiency and accuracy.

Sajeewa Arachchillage, Head of Digital Engineering at TAL said, “At TAL, we are committed to leading the life insurance sector by integrating intelligence and automation into our core business to drive meaningful insights from our data. We are streamlining our processes with innovative technology to better serve our customers and support our people with relevant skills and capabilities to get them ready for an exciting future.“

Integrating Microsoft solutions across every TAL team

The agreement includes a significant uplift in employee access to several Microsoft copilot solutions, making TAL one of the first organisations in Australia to deploy Copilot at scale.

An additional 2000 licenses for Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be rolled out following strong results in time savings and operational efficiencies from TAL’s participation in the Early Access Program that kicked off in October 2023. The majority of TAL’s early access users found Copilot jump-starts the creative process and allows them to focus on more meaningful work^[1]. On average, users are reporting saving 1–2 hours per week on routine tasks, with some users saving up to 5–6 hours a week.

TAL was also the first life insurer to sign up for Microsoft’s Copilot for Security Early Access Program to test the ability for generative AI to enhance its cyber security capabilities.

In addition, TAL engineers now have access to GitHub Copilot, using it to check their coding, enabling the development of solutions for customers and partners faster, safely. The broader Copilot roll-out will be underpinned by TAL’s adaptive framework for responsible and safe use of AI.

Investing in skills for the future

All TAL employees will have access to Microsoft’s Enterprise Skills Initiative, to support broad uptake and skills development in AI, as well as cloud computing and data management. This initiative will provide employees with access to a comprehensive suite of learning resources tailored to various company roles.

The program is designed to support ongoing training and skills development and foster a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. By investing in its people, TAL aims to maintain its position as a leader in digital innovation in Australia’s life insurance industry.

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Notes:
[1] Data based on a survey of TAL users conducted by TAL internally, November 2023 – February 2024.

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Jenny Oliver has been appointed to the role of Chief Executive – Group Life & Retirement. Ms Oliver will be responsible for leading TAL’s partnerships with the superannuation community in providing market-leading life insurance solutions to superannuation fund members, and leading TAL’s work in the development of solutions that support Australians to retire with confidence.

In her current role as TAL’s Chief Claims Officer, Ms Oliver has led the transformation of TAL’s claims capabilities, building a strong claims leadership team, investing in the broader claims team skills and capabilities, amplifying strong risk and governance practices, and delivering an ambitious technology transformation program.

TAL will undertake a recruitment process to fill the vacant Chief Claims Officer role. In the interim, Ms Oliver will continue to provide executive oversight for TAL’s Claims function.

After a decade with TAL, Chief Commercial Officer – Individual Life, Tim Thorne has decided to retire from his executive career and pursue a non-executive portfolio. Mr Thorne has led the Individual Life business through a period of significant change and growth, including the acquisitions of Asteron Life and Westpac Life. Mr Thorne has brought a culture of innovation and strong customer focus to TAL during a period of significant disruption in the Australian life insurance industry.

Fiona Macgregor has been appointed as Chief Executive – Individual Life, replacing Mr Thorne.

Since joining TAL more than nine years ago, Ms Macgregor has held a number of leadership roles across innovation, customer, brand and technology. In particular, as Chief Information & Innovation Officer for the last five years, Ms Macgregor has worked deeply on strategy formulation and delivery, the acquisition and integration of Asteron Life and Westpac Life, and enabling business growth and performance through the connection of technology and business capabilities.

Under Ms Macgregor’s leadership, the Individual Life business will be focused on industry leadership in outcomes for customers, delivering value in TAL’s partnerships with financial advisers and strategic alliance partners, and providing Australians with access to high-quality life insurance solutions through their channel of choice. Ms Macgregor’s appointment will also see an emphasis on market-leading digital enablement and delivery to meet the needs and expectations of customers and partners.

Executive General Manager, Technology, Hinesh Chauhan has been promoted to the role of TAL’s Chief Information Officer, with responsibility for the company’s technology function.

Since joining TAL in 2018, Mr Chauhan has made a significant contribution to strengthening TAL’s technology function, and digital culture and capabilities. Mr Chauhan remains focused on working with TAL’s technology partners to support business operations, meet rising information and cyber security expectations, and to enhance the way TAL supports its customers and partners through both existing and new technologies, such as generative AI.

In communications to employees and partners, TAL Group CEO and Managing Director, Brett Clark on behalf of the Executive Team thanked Mr Thorne for his valuable contribution and added that the internal appointments were a testament to TAL’s commitment to fostering strong leadership and succession planning within the company.

“These leadership appointments to Group Life & Retirement, Individual Life and Technology reflect TAL’s unwavering commitment to our customers and partners and I am delighted that it has been an obvious choice to appoint these roles from within TAL, reflecting our commitment to leadership development and succession planning. I would also like to thank Tim for his valuable contributions to TAL over a decade and his leadership of the Individual Life business through a period of significant growth and change,” said Mr Clark.

The Executive Team appointments take effect immediately.

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