How Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is redefining insurance, one role at a time

Insurers are facing greater challenges today than at any time in recent memory. Between economic and geo-political factors, climate change impacts, and the new social and competitive realities of a post-COVID-19 world, the insurance landscape is perilous—but also rich with opportunities. In response, innovative companies are exploring new business models and rethinking employee engagement, with technology at the core of new approaches. 

It is no wonder then that AI is so appealing to leading insurers. Its amazing ability to glean insights from data, create documents, and enable people to build powerful solutions using natural language promises to help insurers meet the unprecedented demands of the moment. This is central to our vision for intelligent insurance and our work with Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services.  

Most of the insurance companies we talk to are seriously exploring generative AI. For many, however, the scope of the opportunity is so wide-ranging that it can be difficult to identify productive early steps. Fortunately, there is an option available today that can deliver clear near-term productivity benefits and also help lay the groundwork for a successful long-term AI journey. 

How Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 can impact insurance 

Imagine two years ago if a vendor promised a solution that resulted in employees spending 64% less time on email or that resulted in 70% of employees self-reporting as more productive. What seemed unbelievable until very recently is the impact of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 just months after its introduction last year.  

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a unique offering that integrates generative AI features into the Microsoft 365 applications that many employees use on a regular basis. In effect, it is a real-time, intelligent assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and more, applying the power of large language models (LLMs) to an organization’s data to significantly reduce the time and energy required to perform an endless number of rote tasks.  

In November 2023, Microsoft surveyed 297 early adopters, across industries, to quantify the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365. As detailed in the Work Trend Index Special Report, it delivered significant productivity gains among employees, with the promise of fostering broader organizational improvements over time. This is especially exciting for insurance companies, which have a wide range of roles that could benefit from this assistance. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Provide real-time intelligent assistance

Discover more

How Copilot for Microsoft 365 empowers six key roles in insurance 

On the one hand, insurers operate in a world of exacting processes, strict compliance, and regulatory considerations. On the other hand, competitiveness demands greater efficiencies, faster speed to market, and improved customer service. Copilot for Microsoft 365 addresses both dimensions. Among its many benefits, it helps employees easily find and navigate business data, analyze trends, and rapidly create insightful reports and documents, without requiring the company to build customized solutions for specific use cases.  

In our work with insurers, we have identified multiple ways that Copilot can assist in key roles across the business.  

1. The agent and broker, who markets, advises, sells, and services insurance coverage for policyholders, can use Copilot to: 

• Help customers understand their insurance options, with customer-specific reports and summaries of products written in plain language. 
• Provide prompt customer service, with a fast and accurate summary of a Teams meeting with a customer, including recommendations and actions.  
• Be more responsive to customers by generating customized emails in response to specific queries and needs. 

2. The claims employee, who handles claims from first point of contact to resolution, can: 

• Accelerate settlement discussions by drafting summarizations of claims content and meeting recaps.  
• Enable contact center employees to be more efficient when assisting policyholders when they first report a loss. 
• Summarize and annotate company policy, processes, and guidelines to expedite processing of claims. 

3. The underwriter, who assesses risk factors in providing insurance to customers, and helps to establish policy pricing, can: 

• Research multiple sources of data and insights in evaluating risk and pricing options.  
• Get instant access to guidelines and regulations relative to an application. 
• Summarize complex documents used throughout the underwriting process. 

4. The financial advisor, who provides insurance policies and annuities to clients based on their financial situation, can: 

• Combine insights such as changes in the market and client life events to inform and personalize financial planning discussions.  
• Manage accounts more efficiently by summarizing emails, chats, and meeting notes, and drafting presentations specific to the client based on existing documents and data. 
• Improve customer follow-up with emails that recap conversations and include draft proposals based on discussions. 

5. The leader or manager, who manages multifunctional teams in complex organizations, can: 

• Quickly create new business plans and update objectives and key results (OKRs) or key performance indicators (KPIs) based on existing documents and organizational inputs. 
• Gain new insights on product sales and industry trends based on myriad sources. 
• Quickly build presentations with discussion notes for specific leadership events.  

6. The contact center representative, who listens to customer needs and provides solutions through inbound and outbound calls, can:  

• Recap customer meetings and conversations. 
• Proactively identify issues, and draft recommendations or resolution messages, to distribute to targeted recipients or channels. 
• Measure sentiment and conversational trends associated with conversations or posts. 

Key considerations for successful adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365

As with any promising new technology, realizing the full value of Copilot for Microsoft 365 adoption requires careful planning and implementation across the organization.  

There is no single roadmap for success. The key is to clearly define how Copilot will support business strategy. Some insurers choose to invest in a significant upgrade of their technical infrastructure. For example, global property and causality insurer Canopius migrated from dual datacenters to Microsoft Azure, determining that it would help meet their goals across international markets and set the stage for AI solutions, including Copilot for Microsoft 365. Other companies choose a more incremental approach based on their current cloud investments.  

From a technology perspective, AI innovation in insurance can only happen on a modern cloud platform that delivers hyperscale computing power with the requisite security and regulatory compliance attributes. Concurrently, you need a clear data strategy to ensure that all data made accessible to AI is properly protected by permissions and access controls, so that only the right people in the right roles can access sensitive information. Data governance and accountability structures are also essential. 

Then, it is important to recognize that readiness is as much a cultural challenge as a technical one. Employee training and support are essential costs that should not be shortchanged.  

Getting started with Copilot for Microsoft 365

For insurers considering adopting Copilot for Microsoft 365, our advice is to start with your Microsoft solutions partner and Microsoft representative and discuss developing a plan. We often advise companies to start small, and begin experimenting on a role-specific basis, in cases of specific friction or bottlenecks that copilots can immediately address. This helps you identify important issues and sets you up to experiment with broader scenarios and role types.  

But as previously noted, every AI journey is unique. The important thing is simply to begin. For a framework and supporting resources to help foster successful adoption of Copilot, see our Copilot Success Kit. For more on the impact of Copilot on business productivity and creativity, see the Work Trend Index Special Report. For a roadmap to create business value with AI, see The AI Strategy Roadmap.  

Naveen Dhar

Director, Insurance Digital Strategy, Worldwide Financial Services

With more than 20 years of experience in insurance and technology, Naveen Dhar is a leader in helping insurers employ AI and cloud computing to transform customer experience, claims and underwriting. As head of the Microsoft Insurance community globally, he provides strategic guidance and thought leadership to insurers worldwide.

See more articles from this author