AI DEPLOYMENT IN BENEFITS AND INSURANCE: A ROADMAP FOR PEOS

As we approach 2025, the industry must recognize the urgency for AI adoption. With a growing base of tech-savvy customers, software firms, PEOs, brokers, HR technology companies, data providers, carriers, and other providers will soon be expected to integrate AI into their service models. AI capabilities will likely become a key differentiator in open enrollment or contract year evaluations for RFPs and renewals. The rise of generative AI, powered by large language models (LLMs), will continue to revolutionize the benefits and insurance experience for customers, employees, and third parties across the value chain.

LLMs, like ChatGPT, are advanced AI algorithms that use neural network techniques to comprehend language and text. These models are widely used for content generation, image creation, machine translation, and chatbots.

Today, AI can streamline operations, enhance talent acquisition, transform enrollment and onboarding processes, elevate customer experience, and provide firms with actionable insights.

However, firms often face challenges in accelerating AI adoption while managing day-to-day production, resource spikes during open enrollment, year-end reporting, tax planning, and compliance activities.

Many firms adopt a use-case approach to demonstrate the value of AI, select tools, and build momentum within the enterprise. While this approach remains relevant, the competitive landscape now demands a strategic approach to enterprise AI deployment. Companies are increasingly leveraging AI to deliver more intuitive and effective user experiences as applications become more sophisticated. So, where should a PEO begin, and how should they build an AI roadmap? Here are some insights and tips for planning your AI journey.

AI AS A CONTENT GENERATOR

In our experience, the most effective use cases for AI often start in areas where both front and back-office functions can be transformed through AI-driven content generation. Many firms begin their AI journey with recruiting, marketing, and finance to generate digital and video content, financial reports, and proposals. For example, AI can create marketing collateral detailing various benefit and insurance plans, providing insights on coverage and costs. AI can also personalize content for target prospects, making benefit and insurance plans more relevant to their specific industries.

Starting with content generation and back-office functions builds confidence in AI technology with minimal risk to customer engagement. However, the potential of AI extends far beyond these initial steps, enhancing the customer experience across the entire value chain. To create a strategic roadmap for 2025, firms need to embrace AI in interactive transactions that transform decision-making, problem-solving, and customer service.

AI FOR DATA INGESTION

AI can provide organizations with critical insights into risk areas, new sales opportunities, and customer retention improvements. Generative AI and LLM features are integrated with core applications, data lakes, and digital technologies to enhance customer experience. AI can ingest data from both structured and unstructured sources, digitizing it for processing, decision making, and analytics.

Use cases include ingesting insurance applications and carrier loss-runs for commercial insurance, eliminating manual data entry. Other repeatable forms or documents such as contracts, resumes, plan documents, and claims are also candidates for AI ingestion, driving process transformation. Once digitized, the data is available for transaction processing, scoring for recruiting, triaging risk, underwriting, or ensuring compliance.

AI AS A VIRTUAL AGENT

Adoption of virtual agents and chatbots leveraging LLM capabilities is increasing. Chatbot capabilities have expanded to better interpret user inquiries and improve their ability to meet user needs, allowing call center agents to focus on more complex scenarios. AI also reduces call duration by generating checklists, presenting call history, triggering follow-up tasks, and generating call summaries with actionable next steps. Firms have adopted AI for both chatbots, and live agent use cases, providing a cost-effective service option.

AI FOR DECISION SUPPORT

Integrating AI into core applications will have the most significant impact on a firm’s ability to grow revenue while delivering services at a lower cost. Early adopters will gain a competitive edge by using AI, automation, and analytics to empower knowledge workers, making them more productive and focused on complex cases. Enrollment, onboarding, submissions, underwriting, claims, and renewals are all transactions that can benefit from AI’s aggregation, mining, and actionable insights. Every major business transaction will eventually be a candidate for enhancement with AI.

AI AS THE CYBER DEFENDER

Using AI-based solutions for cyber defense is already a best practice. With proven ingestion, pattern recognition, and machine learning capabilities, top cyber vulnerability management and penetration testing solutions use AI to identify patterns of cyber intrusion, prevent or contain breaches, analyze vulnerabilities, and highlight exploitable risks. At Quess GTS, our cyber mitigation solutions incorporate proven AI-based solutions, to monitor and prevent cyber intrusion in our 24/7 x 365 Global Operating Center.

AI ACCELERATION

We take a vendor-agnostic approach to AI tools so that we may recommend solutions that best align with your operations, technology stack, and business objectives. Important considerations include your office tools and cloud technologies (such as Microsoft Azure, M365, Co-Pilot or Google Cloud, Gmail/Google Docs, Domino). For these collaboration suites, AI is deployed to maximize productivity for your staff for presentations, proposals, spreadsheets, and document management. These technologies must operate seamlessly with core transaction and customer centric applications.

For custom solutions, we build production-ready applications in 90-day releases following an AI roadmap developed from collaborative discovery and visioning sessions. Whether you are focusing on an initial use case or deploying AI across the enterprise, these roadmaps enable firms of any size to harness the potential of AI while ensuring trusted data usage and secure technical guardrails. As you finalize your 2025 plans, consider a more aggressive approach to AI deployment and adoption, and enjoy the benefits!