Great Eastern's ASEAN playbook: AI-enabled advisory, specialised products, multi-channel scale
Great Eastern Life Assurance is reshaping its growth strategy across Southeast Asia with a simple mandate: meet customers where they are, and serve them with sharper propositions and faster, more useful advice. The insurer is expanding offerings for high-net-worth clients and SME owners while rolling out AI to lift productivity across its 13,000-strong advisory network.
What's changing for customers
Expect more precise propositions that reflect distinct life stages and financial goals. The company is investing in digital experiences and advisor tools so clients get consistent, high-quality guidance across protection, health, wealth accumulation, and legacy planning-online or with a representative.
AI that frees up advisor time
An in-house AI tool now cuts meeting prep from more than two hours to under 30 minutes. At scale in Singapore, that's roughly half-a-million hours returned to customer-facing work-more reviews, more follow-ups, and cleaner documentation.
Distribution: digital plus human
Great Eastern isn't choosing between embedded/digital and agency. It's keeping digital, agency, bancassurance, and affinity partners in play. The goal: simple access for straightforward needs, and human guidance for life, health, and wealth decisions that carry long-term trade-offs.
Where the growth is
- Two focus tracks: serve clear market gaps and deepen penetration with better propositions.
- Macro drivers: fast wealth creation and intergenerational transfer, ageing populations and retirement adequacy, and AI transforming advisory, underwriting, servicing, and claims.
- Market priorities: double down in Singapore and Malaysia (including family takaful), scale Indonesia, and assess new markets through OCBC Group connectivity.
Why this matters for insurance leaders
- Advisor productivity is now a data-and-AI problem. Time saved is capacity gained for deeper planning and higher persistency.
- Segmentation wins. Products and service models need to fit distinct personas-HNW, mass affluent, family business owners-without adding operational drag.
- Multi-channel is table stakes. Embedded and direct are growth levers, but complex needs still rely on skilled human guidance.
- Value chain impact. Expect AI to touch suitability reviews, underwriting triage, fraud signals, medical insights, and claims adjudication.
Action steps you can apply
- Quantify advisor time sinks and automate prep, comparisons, and suitability summaries.
- Build a clear persona-to-proposition map (benefits, riders, service model, handoffs).
- Pilot AI with tight guardrails: explainability, compliance prompts, and audit trails.
- Realign distribution KPIs to reflect multi-channel journeys and lifetime value, not single-touch sales.
- Create HNW and SME playbooks: underwriting pathways, liquidity solutions, and cross-border servicing.
For more on the company's direction, see the official site for Great Eastern.
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