Delivering the first release of its new policy administration system and embedding GenAI at scale across the value chain are two of the significant technology highlights for Suncorp. The insurance company claims its continued focus on platform modernisation and AI-enabled operational transformation underpinned its FY25 result.
In its first year as a pure-play trans-tasman insurer, Suncorp has continued modernising platforms at pace and accelerated its AI, digitisation and automation initiatives, delivering smarter, safer, and more personalised experiences for its customers and people.
Suncorp’s chief information officer Adam Bennett said over the past 12 months, the organisation has truly begun to reap the rewards of several years of groundwork.
“This year we saw the foundational work start to not only make things simpler for our people, but also begin delivering superior customer experiences,” Bennett said.
Suncorp went live with the first release of its new cloud-based policy administration platform for its joint venture in New Zealand, AA Insurance (AAI) in April, automating its business rules, reducing underwriting referrals, and significantly improving the digital customer and employee experience.
“Without question, our most significant achievement this year was the first release of our new customer policy administration system as part of our Digital Insurer program. This isn’t just a new piece of tech, this is fundamentally transforming how we build and deliver products to our customers, future-proofing the entire operation,” Bennett said.
The migration of Suncorp’s workloads to the cloud progressed significantly. With 93 per cent of workloads now hosted in public cloud environments, and all Brisbane-based data centres exited, Suncorp has unlocked the benefits of enhanced service delivery, improved security, and greater cost efficiency – enabling its broader platform modernisation and AI-enabled transformation ambitions.
Suncorp successfully introduced a new, cloud-based contact centre platform for its 7,500-plus customer service team members. The new platform integrates voice, chat, email, and social media channels, and adds AI-guided prompts, sentiment analytics, and real-time recommendations to assist employees in improving their customer interactions. These enhancements will unlock opportunities to reduce call durations, accelerate speed to market, and increase personalisation, delivering tangible benefits for our people, customers and business.
There has been continued momentum in leveraging Suncorp’s intermediated business insurance policy platform, VeroEdge, to connect with its large broker partners in FY25, with further partners due to connect in FY26.
Suncorp’s efforts in establishing strong foundations for AI usage – including people, technology, and risk considerations – have paved the way for the accelerated adoption of AI across the organisation. This was recently acknowledged at the Australian Financial Review AI awards, winning the AI Award for Ethics and Responsibility.
The delivery of sophisticated AI-powered conversational tools in FY25 has enabled more than 2.8 million conversations with customers, up 22 per cent on last year. These conversations can cover a range of requests, including viewing and updating policy details, requesting a document, or cancelling their policy and receiving a refund.
Customers increasingly chose to engage digitally, with digital sales and service transactions for mass brand products increasing to 78 per cent and 58 per cent, respectively. Sixty-five per cent of natural hazard claims were also lodged online during FY25.
“We continue to invest in AI, digitisation and automation across the value chain. Having established the core AI foundational elements across strategy, people, technology, and risk management, we are able to strike the right balance of moving at pace, safely,” Bennett said.