The next step for AI in insurance — partnerships to scale

While many insurance providers have begun adopting artificial intelligence, others are already racing ahead to the next stage of scaling solutions — a stage that could be marked by a trend of strategic partnerships, according to Jodie Wallis, global chief AI officer, Manulife.

Some insurance companies have been hesitant to adopt AI, due to concerns ranging from safety and security to governance concerns and more.

But not Manulife. The Canada-based parent company of John Hancock in the U.S. has taken a progressive approach to implementing AI, earning it global recognition as a life insurance leader in AI, and a top ranking for AI maturity in the Evident AI Index for Insurance.

Earlier this year, Manulife announced a new partnership with agentic AI platform Akka, just the latest of its advancements in technology. And Wallis believes this could be a trend the wider industry will start adopting.

“We believe this partnership is catching the attention of the wider insurance industry,” she told InsuranceNewsNet.

In her view, the “need to accelerate speed of deployments while maintaining or improving risk posture is a common challenge” for insurers seeking to scale their AI solutions, and strategic partnerships like this can help bridge that gap.

“The partnership reflects our need for engineering discipline and operational rigor as we scale AI in a highly regulated industry where trust, predictability and safety are essential,” Wallis said.

A new agentic AI emerges

Manulife plans to leverage Akka’s technology as it builds out an enterprise agentic AI platform, equipped with AI insurance agents capable of understanding tasks, analyzing information and acting.

“These agents support colleagues in areas such as underwriting, claims, customer service and investment research, helping them work faster and deliver more accurately. The platform reduces development time, lowers operational costs and ensures that every agent is built with strong governance, embedded safeguards and responsible AI controls,” Wallis said.

As the company develops this platform, which is currently in the beta testing phase, Wallis noted that heavy emphasis is being placed on systems that can operate with the “consistency, governance and compliance” needed to support both clients and colleagues across global markets.

However, she added that it was equally important to work with technology that complements Manulife’s Responsible AI philosophy — a set of published principles that support human agency and business conduct ethics.

“Responsible AI is embedded into every phase of our AI lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and ongoing monitoring. This partnership aligns directly with our Responsible AI Principles and reinforces our commitment to building AI systems that are explainable, resilient and safe,” Wallis said.

Key partnership strengths

Ethical synergy was just one of the reasons Manulife chose to partner with Akka, a digital platform that emerged in 2011 and has since racked up a notable list of clients across industries.

But the company’s strength in agentic AI and consistent results made it that much more appealing to one of the world’s largest insurers.

“Akka’s strength in orchestration, operational SLAs and system reliability is essential in a highly regulated industry,” Wallis explained. “Akka provides a durable, highly available runtime that strengthens the platform’s security, reliability and performance as AI becomes embedded in mission-critical workflows across the organization. They also enable a consistent developer experience across global markets.”

She noted that companies seeking to scale AI, like Manulife, stand to benefit from partnerships with companies or solutions that can enhance AI platforms and ensure systems can run reliably in a high-volume environment.

“By enabling AI agents at scale, we can accelerate decision-making, streamline complex processes and enhance customer experience across the enterprise. This is critical as we move from AI solutions that power better decisions to AI solutions that take action as part of our core operations,” Wallis explained.

Capitalizing on AI value

If all goes well with this partnership, Manulife hopes it will support the company’s goal of seeing over $1 billion in AI-driven gains over the next year alone.

And, according to Wallis, it’s not out of line with the strategic relationships Manulife has steadily announced over the years as part of its ongoing AI journey. She believes it builds on recent work with partners such as Adaptive ML, an AI software company, and its Adaptive Engine tool that supports reinforcement learning-based model optimization within Manulife’s AI platform.

In designing its AI platform, Wallis noted, Manulife set out to create an enterprise capability to “build, reuse and govern AI at scale” while avoiding multiple rounds of reinvention.

“The partnership supports our enterprise commitment to generating more than $1 billion in value from AI by 2027. Using Akka, AI practitioners get a head start with AI governance embedded for safety and consistency. Development can occur in parallel for local teams, and all that work is contributed back to be reused by others,” she said.

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Rayne Morgan is a journalist, copywriter, and editor with over 10 years' combined experience in digital content and print media. You can reach her at [email protected].