Case study
From legacy to leading edge with AI
Harnessing custom AI tools to scale and enhance tomorrow’s insurance solutions.
Our client is one of the largest and longest-standing mutual insurance groups in the US, offering comprehensive homeowner’s, commercial, and rental property insurance.
Challenge
Using AI to enhance the future of insurance innovation
Our client, a US insurance group, wanted to uncover the business value of infusing AI tools and custom GPTs into the existing innovation process, creating a competitive advantage against other insurance companies. The team sought ways to make their process more efficient using AI – and, specifically, using Custom GPTs to ideate and validate ways to improve upon their innovation process.
Strategy
Integrating AI to revolutionize the innovation process in a risk-averse space
We used AI to transform the innovation process and achieve faster, high-impact outcomes for a competitive edge.
Through this project, our client had an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by responding to variable market conditions with AI-powered approaches in a risk-averse, complex innovation space. BOI worked with the client’s innovation team to determine high leverage places to use AI, built multiple custom GPT’s for the team to leverage, and used AI with the team to solve the challenge of discovering innovative solutions for frontline independent agents.
Outcome
Proving the value of AI and enabling teams to go further
Through this project, our client’s innovation team obtained AI tools and capabilities, with benefits that extend even further. Together we collaborated faster, producing over 180 ideas in a short time. The results were just as impactful and more innovative than prior, human-led work. We considered feasibility and impact when refining ideas down to the final 10. We evolved the ideas to concepts using synthetic validation and initial implementation roadmapping – all using AI. The team is ready and skilled to apply these learnings to their everyday responsibilities.
We developed over 180 ideas, refined them into 10 prioritized concepts, and equipped the team with six custom GPTs to continue leveraging AI for future innovation.
Challenge
Using AI to enhance the future of insurance innovation
Our client had a robust but manual innovation process. While effective, it was time-consuming, inefficient, and required extensive participation across multiple rounds of ideation.
The challenge was to integrate AI, specifically custom GPT models, into their well-established innovation process to achieve faster, higher-quality results, and enhance the experience of its independent agents without adding complexity that would overwhelm the service teams.
Our partnership with this 200-year-old insurance company was a testament to how tradition and technology can come together to create something truly transformative. By integrating AI into their innovation process, we were able to unlock unprecedented levels of creativity and efficiency. This project not only set a new standard for what's possible in the insurance industry but also demonstrated the immense potential of AI to drive meaningful, impactful change.
Juju Malkani, Associate Director - BOI (Board of Innovation)
Strategy
Integrating AI to revolutionize the innovation process in a risk-averse space
Unafraid to take the leap into the unknown, our client transitioned from 0 to 1 in AI innovation, boldly embracing advanced technology despite being in a traditionally risk-averse industry.
We collaborated closely with our client to to determine high leverage places to integrate cutting-edge AI into its longstanding processes, developing a suite of six custom AI-powered tools that revolutionized their approach to ideation and feasibility analysis, and discovery of innovative solutions for frontline independent agents. These independent agents represent our client’s products, but operate independently, so it was crucial to make their experience with our client seamless and efficient.
This proactive initiative empowered their team to generate over 180 groundbreaking ideas to improve the lives of their insurance agents, distilling them into 10 high-impact solutions, all while slashing the time needed to conduct this process with humans only by 25%.
Stakeholder engagement
We began by working with the innovation team and understanding their current processes, as well as the needs and frustrations of their independent agents. We utilized existing resources, such as journey maps and personas, to inform the AI models.
Custom GPT Development
We built six custom GPT models, each tailored to specific stages of the innovation process. These models included ideation agents for rapid idea generation, prioritization agents to assess desirability and feasibility, and synthetic testing agents to validate concepts against detailed personas.
Workshops
We conducted five workshops focused on applying the custom GPTs to real-world scenarios, generating over 180 ideas, which were refined down to 10 validated concepts. Additionally, we held a tutorial workshop to empower the innovation team to build and use their own custom GPTs in the future.
In a risk-averse industry like insurance, innovation often comes with significant challenges. Our approach was to use AI not as a replacement for human insight but as a catalyst, allowing the team to generate and validate ideas at a pace and depth previously unimaginable. This blend of technology and human expertise is what truly sets this project apart
Geoff Gibbins, Managing Director Americas - BOI (Board of Innovation)
Outcome
Proving the value of AI and enabling teams to go further
6 custom GPTs
The team built six custom AI tools to use througout the course of the project and beyond for research and ideation
180 AI generated ideas
With input from internal and external sources, the ideation agent produces a workshop's worth of ideas in minutes
35 ideas refined
The refinement agent helped filter the ideas through desirability, feasibility and viability
10 AI validated concepts
10 feasible and refined concepts identified with key features defined, resource needs addressed, and resolved pain points tracked
Our collaboration led to significant outcomes for our client.
Key outcomes included:
- AI-enhanced innovation: The introduction of custom GPT models resulted in the generation of 180 ideas, refined down to 10 validated concepts, significantly improving the independent agent experience.
- Enabled synthetic validation and high-level implementation roadmapping using AI for prioritized ideas
- Time efficiency: on average, it took 25% less time to generate, categorize, and prioritize AI-generated ideas than human-generated ones
- Strategic alignment: The final concepts aligned closely with the company's goals, offering higher innovation impact compared to the client's original ideas.
- Empowered teams: The innovation team was equipped with tools and knowledge to continue utilizing and developing custom GPTs, setting the stage for future advancements in their innovation process.
Through the integration of AI, our client transformed their innovation process, achieving faster, higher-quality results while maintaining simplicity and reducing complexity. The success of this project not only enhanced the independent agent experience but also positioned our client to continue innovating with cutting-edge AI tools in the future.
Today, the innovation team at this legacy insurance company is more empowered and agile than ever before. In order to gain AI experience for the first time, they partnered with us to develop the confidence and capabilities needed to integrate AI into their operations. Thanks to the integration of AI into their innovation process, they now have the tools and expertise to generate, evaluate, and implement ideas with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The team is confidently leveraging custom GPT models to drive continuous innovation, seamlessly blending their deep industry knowledge with cutting-edge technology. As a result, they are not only responding more effectively to market demands but are also setting new standards for innovation in the insurance sector.
The Innovation Team is now able to go from identifying industry trends and opportunities to drafting solution implementation roadmaps in hours (as opposed to weeks or months), which creates a competitive advantage for us.
Working with BOI was a total pleasure! The team was knowledgeable, accessible, and incredibly collaborative. BOI immediately became an extension of our team, and we are not only left with a set of custom AI tools that will enhance our innovation process, we now also have the skills and ability to create new AI tools going forward thanks to BOI's guidance and expertise.
Director of Innovation at client
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