Zurich Insurance appoints AI leaders from retail and fintech to speed digitisation
Zurich Insurance Group has hired Terry Powell as Group Chief Technology Officer and Cristina Ghetti as Group Head of Digital Employee Experience. Both start on October 20, 2025, reporting to Ericson Chan, Group Chief Information & Digital Officer.
"I am thrilled to welcome Terry and Cristina to Zurich," says Ericson Chan. "Their extensive leadership experience with artificial intelligence in retail and fintech represents exactly the expertise we need to accelerate our digital transformation and drive deeper AI adoption. They bring a vital customer-centric perspective that will significantly enhance the experience for both our customers and employees."
Why this matters for insurers
This move signals execution at scale. Carriers are using AI to streamline claims, strengthen fraud detection, and refine underwriting models for better pricing. Data-centric products like usage-based policies are moving from pilots to business-as-usual.
Who Zurich hired-and what they'll drive
Terry Powell brings enterprise-grade transformation experience from ANZ Bank and AI-led customer initiatives at Domino's Pizza. At Zurich, his mandate is to embed AI into core infrastructure to improve resilience, speed, and cost efficiency.
Cristina Ghetti led one of the largest AI tool deployments at Nestlé. Her focus is workforce enablement: building AI fluency, raising adoption, and making day-to-day work simpler and faster for employees.
From experiments to enterprise implementation
Zurich has been testing aggressively. Its recent "Agentic AI Hyper Challenge" generated 200+ prototypes and the group continues to partner with insurtechs. These hires point to a shift from pockets of innovation to enterprise-wide rollout with a strong customer and employee lens.
Where AI is delivering value across the value chain
- Underwriting: Large language models (LLMs) help triage submissions, extract signals from unstructured data, and support more accurate pricing.
- Claims: Faster FNOL triage, straight-through processing for simple cases, and automated billing reduce cycle time and leakage.
- Fraud: Pattern and anomaly detection improve hit rates and reduce false positives.
- Emerging risks: Preparation for autonomous vehicle liability and potential cyber risks to vehicle systems requires new models and playbooks.
Execution playbook for carriers
- Platform first: Establish a central AI platform under the CTO with shared services for model hosting, data access, observability, and security.
- Pick high-yield journeys: Claims FNOL to settlement, broker submission-to-bind, SIU triage, subrogation, and billing automation.
- Data foundations: Standardized pipelines, feature store, lineage, quality checks, and access controls.
- Model risk management: Clear governance, documentation, performance monitoring, bias testing, human-in-the-loop, and rollback plans.
- Workforce enablement: Role-based training, prompt and review standards, and team-level change champions.
- Security and privacy: PII controls, red-teaming for LLMs, secure sandboxes, and vendor due diligence.
- Metrics that matter: Time-to-quote, claim cycle time, loss adjustment expense, fraud recovery, NPS, and employee adoption.
Compliance and trust
Build to current standards and stay ahead of regulation. Useful references include the NAIC AI Principles and the European Commission's approach to AI policy via the European approach to AI.
What to watch at Zurich
- Core integration of AI into policy admin, claims, and data platforms vs. isolated pilots.
- Employee adoption: active weekly users, task completion time, and satisfaction scores.
- Operational impact: lower cycle times, improved accuracy, and reduced leakage.
- Vendor strategy: consolidation, reusable components, and clear build-versus-buy rules.
Next steps for your team
- Run a 12-week program to ship two production use cases with clear ROI and governance embedded.
- Set a skills baseline and launch role-specific learning paths. If you need structured options, explore AI courses by job.
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