TAL Australia tackles AI amongst staff first

Life insurer, TAL Australia is first experimenting with AI usage amongst employee operations before shifting focus to customers.

Speaking at a recent Genesys Xperience Sydney audience the life insurance company’s strategy planning manager, Katie Holroyd said while the company is still “a little way off” from full AI usage, TAL has been exploring the benefits.

“We'll be experimenting so that there's an agent directly behind that AI.

“The other thing that we've been doing is also being very clear about the pilots or the engagements that we've had with AI.

“We've announced we’re one of the first Microsoft Copilot [uses] for our employees. It’s very clear that it's employees that we're looking at first versus the agents, customers.

“That's how we see it evolving. Making them more comfortable and being very careful about how we use it.”

The business signed a new three-year strategic agreement with Microsoft in early July this year, fast-tracking its commitment to using the latest technology to uplift its service to deliver better experiences for its customers.

Under the agreement, TAL gains access to new technologies including Azure OpenAI Service and supercharging its internal engineering capabilities.

Hinesh Chauhan, chief information officer at TAL said in a statement, “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."

The agreement includes providing employee access to multiple Microsoft Copilot solutions with an additional 2000 licenses for Copilot for Microsoft 365 to be rolled out.