Nation’s first insurance chatbot launched

Anusha (fourth from right) unveiling ’Ask Sara’, Malaysia’s first insurance chatbot. With her are (from leftt) Heislyc Loh and Van Tran from AIA’s Innovation Delivery team; AIA national chief agency officer Kelvin Ang, Life Underwriters Sales Executive Board (LUSEB) president Melvin Yeo and AIA chief customer experience officer Troy Barnes.

AIA Bhd has broken new ground with the launch of Malaysia’s first insurance chatbot, “Ask Sara”.

The new artificial intelligence powered enquiry channel is currently available to AIA’s 14,000-strong agency force, also known as Life Planners, as part of the insurer’s continued efforts to enable its distributors to be more effective in their day-to-day business, particularly when it comes to servicing of customers.

In announcing the arrival of “Ask Sara”, AIA chief executive officer Anusha Thavarajah said, “AIA has a strong legacy of innovation, whereby we have made significant investments in bringing the best of technology to the way we equip and enable our agency force.

“From providing them with iPoS, a multi award-winning iPad-based sales tools that comes with straight-through processing capabilities, to the iServe app that is available within iPoS so that they are able to make simple service change requests for their customers swiftly, we have always been at the forefront of the industry.

“Today with “Ask Sara”, we have achieved another significant milestone in our journey of innovation, as well as in our efforts to provide a seamless experience for our sales force and customers in their interactions with AIA.

“Thanks to the hard work of our Innovation Delivery team which has been building the platform since early this year, Sara will now present our Life Planners with an alternative channel to find instant, quick answers to common questions, and in doing so, help them serve or advise their customers even more efficiently,” she added.

Built with a knowledge bank of 700 commonly asked questions, 140 attachments and a listing of 800 panel clinic and examiners, Sara responds to agents’ enquiries as quickly as within three seconds – all done through Facebook Messenger.

Currently, Sara is able to provide answers to a number of topics such as those relating to customer on-boarding and the insurer’s AIA Vitality programme.

Agents can also request Sara to send them relevant application forms, or help them locate the nearest AIA branch or panel clinic.

“Sara as a platform will continue to learn as she goes.

“With a dedicated team that will monitor her performance closely, we will make sure that we expand Sara’s library of data and accelerate her learning in rapid time frames so that she will continue to provide valuable support to our Life Planners.

“This is only the beginning for us, as we have plans to introduce Sara to our customers in the near future,” Anusha added.