-: New York Life has been around for 179 years.
We're in the middle of a really important transformation
around how do we operate more effectively,
how do we deliver really outstanding experiences
for our agents and for our clients,
and how do we make sure that we're modernizing
a lot of things that we do, the full tech stack?
-: One of the biggest drivers for leaning into generative AI
was a shift in our overall business strategy.
The wave of new capabilities that came with generative AI,
we certainly saw that as an opportunity to embrace
a way to have a step function impact
on our client-agent experience.
We faced a variety of challenges during this transformation.
We had legacy technology,
like a lot of old insurance companies,
that we had to navigate and traverse
as we were trying to bring these solutions to life.
We had new ways of working that we had to embrace,
business, technology, data, all working together
in iterative and agile ways.
Another challenge we faced was change management.
Building a tremendous AI solution
is only part of the battle.
To really affect business value
and actually have real change,
you need business process reengineering
and change management to unlock its full potential.
-: Early in the journey, we determined that,
although we had been in the AI space for a while,
generative AI was moving very rapidly,
and we took some time to deliberate.
We did a good process to select
who we wanted in a partner.
BCG quickly rose to the top as a company
that was really going to help us think through
both the strategy lens as well as how do we do this well
from a more operational perspective,
as well as tapping into some of their technical expertise.
They had very good technical expertise,
were a little bit ahead of us in the GenAI journey,
and very importantly brought a good combination
of a strategic thinking lens as well as some good know-how.
-: When GenAI first came to life about a year,
year and a half ago, New York Life thought about it
as truly transformational, as a way for them
to leapfrog competition.
Change management is a very important topic for BCG.
We truly believe that any technology project
should come with change management,
because technology alone is not enough.
-: So much of it is not just an automation
and replacement of what people do.
For GenAI in particular, it's largely augmentation,
and that makes it, in some ways, even harder
because now you have to ensure that you're doing
the right things to enable people to work really effectively
with these new capabilities.
We wanted to make sure we had a good, responsible AI focus,
and BCG also helped us think through
some of the framework there, how to do this well,
particularly in a heavily regulated industry,
but also just from a pure moral standpoint.
-: We have similar values,
and we're excited to see now New York Life
truly owning and driving the risk-management aspect
of AI implementation.
We spent some time prioritizing which areas
we wanted to invest in, and we decided to invest
in four different areas: claims, servicing,
sales, and marketing.
And the idea is how can we take one function
and truly transform that function end to end?
-: We really feel that these transformations set us up well
for the road ahead.
The way forward's incredibly exciting.
I think it's clear to all of us that AI is moving at a pace
faster than anything we've ever seen before.
And here at New York Life,
we always say that we don't predict, we actually prepare.
And the way that we feel that we can best prepare
is to be as agile as possible
across people, process, and tech.