Manulife Launches Singapore AI Center to Scale Responsible Automation
Manulife has opened an Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence in Singapore to speed up core insurance processes and improve client interactions across Asia. The plan is simple: deploy AI where it cuts cycle time, boosts accuracy, and supports better advice without losing the human relationship. As CEO Benoit Meslet put it, "AI allows us to deliver better, faster, and more personalised service to customers."
The center will focus on underwriting, distribution, operations, and customer engagement. Work will be guided by transparency and security principles, with a clear push to improve service while preparing the workforce for AI-enabled roles.
Where AI Will Hit the Insurance Value Chain
- Underwriting: Accelerated underwriting and triage; document intake and medical data extraction; risk scoring models with explainability for auditors and advisors.
- Distribution: Advisor co-pilots for prep and follow-ups, next-best-action, lead scoring, and compliant content generation at scale.
- Operations: Intelligent document processing, straight-through processing, and exception handling to reduce manual touchpoints.
- Customer engagement: Conversational service with secure retrieval of policy data, multilingual support, and precise handoffs to human teams.
- Fraud and claims: Anomaly detection, FNOL triage, and subrogation opportunity spotting with human-in-the-loop review.
Guardrails: Transparency, Security, and Governance
- Use-case risk tiers with matching controls: from low-risk productivity aids to high-impact underwriting or claims decisions.
- Model inventory, versioning, and lineage; periodic drift monitoring and bias testing against approved metrics.
- Clear explanations for decisions that affect eligibility or pricing; auditable prompts and outputs for LLM use.
- PII protection, consent management, data residency, and vendor security reviews baked into intake.
- Human oversight at defined checkpoints; exception thresholds and rollback plans.
Why Singapore
Singapore brings deep tech talent, strong digital infrastructure, and a maturing AI governance framework-ideal for building and testing at pace. Manulife plans to expand AI hiring across data science, governance, and engineering over the next three years.
Scaling Best Practices Across the Region
Manulife will contribute to industry standards through the Monetary Authority of Singapore's initiatives and research partnerships. Mark Czajkowski, Chief AI Officer for Manulife Asia, highlighted that "responsible innovation, governance, and impact" sit at the core of the enterprise strategy.
For context on Singapore's approach to responsible AI in finance, see the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Veritas initiative on FEAT principles: Monetary Authority of Singapore and Veritas (FEAT).
What It Means for Insurance Leaders
- Prioritise near-term wins: Claims intake automation, advisor co-pilots, and policy servicing chat can show measurable ROI within quarters.
- Define hard metrics: STP rate, average handle time, quote-to-bind, claim cycle time, first contact resolution, exception rate, fraud false positives, fairness metrics.
- Build cross-functional pods: Pair product owners with underwriters, claims SMEs, data scientists, and compliance from day one.
- Production with discipline: Model risk management, red-teaming for LLMs, continuous monitoring, and clear kill switches.
- Talent plan: Upskill existing teams while hiring for MLOps, data engineering, and AI governance.
- Vendor strategy: Blend proven platforms with targeted in-house builds; standardize contracts on audit, IP, and data use.
Long-Term Bet: Technology-Driven Value Creation
By wiring advanced analytics and automation into core operations, Manulife is aiming for productivity gains and more intuitive protection solutions across its markets. The signal to the industry is clear: AI investment has moved from optional to essential for growth and cost efficiency.
Bottom line: Focus on explainable models, measurable business impact, and controls that scale. Win quick, govern hard, and keep advisors and customers at the center.
If your team is building AI skills for underwriting, claims, or distribution, these curated learning paths can help: AI courses by job role.
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