Don Hurrle is the IT Director and Andrew Quinn is the Product Manager - GenAI at Westfield Insurance, a leading U.S.-based property and casualty insurance company. Don and Andrew were interviewed by Michael Fiedel, Co-Founder at InsurTech Ohio and Co-Founder at PolicyFly, Inc.
Don and Andrew, what is your high-level perspective around Generative AI (GenAI) and its potential impact on the insurance industry?
Don:
“At its most basic level, GenAI can read, summarize and synthesize data to help any decision process, but GenAI can take us beyond these simple tasks. For insurance, the insurance industry is built on personalization. We all have a different policy, whether that's an auto, homeowner’s or small business policy. The fact that it’s so personalized means the complexity is off the charts. Each of us is a snowflake in the insurance world, and we all want that personalization. GenAI can be the ultimate assistant, helping us understand how to uniquely approach each individual.”
Andrew:
“I am excited about the innovation that GenAI is bringing to the insurance industry. Throughout my career, I've worked with highly skilled, innovative people who've been bogged down with administrative tasks, limiting their ability to focus on creative and strategic initiatives. Right now, many people spend about 80 percent of their time on administrative work and only 20 percent on value-added activities. At Westfield, we're continually aiming to flip that value equation.
By leveraging GenAI, we can free up time for more meaningful, strategic and high-impact work – such as innovation, learning and development,and blue-sky thinking. The potential is truly endless. In addition, that value flip is not only going to unlock that creativity and innovation, but it's going to lead to a more fulfilling employee experience. I'm confident that when we have fulfilled creative employees across the insurance industry with time to think about how to creatively solve problems, it will lead to innovation that drives better customer outcomes.”
From an employee impact point-of-view, how do you successfully frame internal conversations about GenAI when talking to key stakeholders within Westfield?
Andrew:
“I always provide two key perspectives and then let key stakeholders run with their ideas. The first perspective I share is that GenAI is not a magic solution to every problem. It's one of many tools in our toolbox. A more productive view of GenAI is something that can augment existing expertise. It's a means to enhance what we already do well and not a one-size-fits-all fix.
The second perspective is that the most effective way to utilize GenAI is to start by clearly identifying the problem you're trying to solve. Then, you think about how GenAI can help. This is such a subtle and important shift because people often think in broad terms that GenAI the technology is going to maximize efficiency and save hundreds of hours, but they do not produce any actionable ways to do that. The more effective approach is to break it down into a simpler problem statement. ‘We spend too much time reading long emails. How might we be able to use GenAI to reduce that time?’”
Andrew, what are some business-centric examples of GenAI in use today?
“The Westfield team is incredibly talented, but they're spending too much time on administrative tasks rather than the value-added activities. When we asked ourselves how we might reduce the administrative burdens that our employees face, we quickly identified the low-hanging fruit of summarization, which has become one of our major initial areas of focus.
Recently, we released an email summarizer. It takes lengthy emails or attachments, and it provides summaries that highlight the key data and the action items contained within the email. From there, we've expanded that summarization into other areas of large, complex content. For example, we now offer summarization on thousand-page claims demand packages, one-hundred-page new business applications and even meeting transcripts where critical decisions have been made. For our product teams who have to read dense product circulars, we've utilized GenAI to extract the most important information, allowing our employees to spend less time sifting through these documents and more time acting on the key insights.
This shift is exciting because it enables our team to focus on higher-value tasks, improving both our organizational efficiency and our end-customer outcomes.”
Don, what are some of the technical advantages of GenAI that you're already seeing?
“It has the potential to change the way we work and the way we do business. It’s similar to the internet 30 years ago and how it changed the way we work and interact with people. I believe the same thing will happen with GenAI. From a technology standpoint, we’re using GenAI to generate code to improve speed and quality of our deliverables. We have some pretty gnarly spaghetti code out there! GenAI can help identify technical debt in our code base and offer solutions to ease maintainability and supportability of our code. We can also use GenAI to document code for the next generation and aid in how we onboard new employees.
We’re also seeing non-technology roles take advantage of GenAI. It’s exciting to hear people say, ‘Hey, I have this Python code that I wrote, and I'm trying to figure out how to solve this business problem.’ GenAI has helped non-technology employees break down previous barriers and learn to use it on their own. As someone who's leading technology, I want to enable those people to solve problems by leveraging technology that’s in their hands.”
What future use cases for GenAI have we not tapped into yet that you are most bullish about?
Don:
“Trying to predict the future of GenAI is a little bit of a fool's errand. It's exciting, and there are enhanced updates and models continually being released, allowing us to do even more. Thinking about the massive leaps we’ve made in just 12 months, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead, especially across the entire insurance life cycle. We've started with claims, and we believe the next frontier is within the underwriting area. It's going to be fun to see how GenAI impacts that area to improve customer, employee and agent experience. I don't know exactly how this is going to work, but again, it's exciting to be a part of that journey.”
Andrew:
“As an insurance carrier, we have an overwhelming amount of data. We have underwriting data, claims data, work management data, market research data and so much more. One of our most time-consuming activities is the organization of the data and the building of reports just so that we can understand it. I am particularly excited about how GenAI can help us streamline this process. By leveraging GenAI, we could more efficiently and effectively unlock the insights from our data, turning it into actionable intelligence. This is going to enable us to solve business challenges faster and make smarter data-driven decisions across the organization.”
What are three things that need to be kept in mind when leveraging GenAI in order for the business to be successful?
Andrew:
“The most important thing to remember when leveraging GenAI is that people remain a great asset at any organization. The true business success that we've seen has come from combining the knowledge, experience and creativity of a human being with GenAI technology. While AI can augment capabilities, it's ultimately our people who are driving innovation and success.
The second notable is that adaptability is key. As Don mentioned, technology is rapidly evolving. New capabilities emerge almost monthly, so we must continue to remain agile, not just in how we're implementing the technology but also in how we're approaching problem solving. We can't continue to do things the same way. This new technology is unlocking new ways of working and solving problems, and it's important for us to stay curious and open to new ideas to ensure that we'll continue to be effective and maintain competitive advantage.”
Don:
“For me, it’s about change management, and our ability to manage this change is key. Change needs to be managed at all levels of the organization, and, at Westfield, we've put together a team to do that. It's not something that happens by accident. Having a change-management strategy is paramount to help with the adoption. We’ve started a GenAI Community of Practice to ensure we capture best practices and encourage “the art of the possible” across our organization.
Finally, my advice is to give GenAI a try. Experiment with it, test and learn! Be proactive and try something; that's the key. GenAI is not going away; it’s here to stay, so invest time in some experiments and then showcase the wins and losses to overcome any hesitation with Gen AI. I bet the wins will outpace the losses in the long run.”
InsurTech Ohio Thanks Its Presenting Partner
And Our Premier Partners
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |