Zurich Insurance APAC secures win at Insurance Asia Awards 2026 for GenAI-powered underwriting transformation

New Business 2.0 orchestrates 12 domain-specialised AI agents that perform underwriting assessments in parallel.

Zurich Insurance APAC won the AI Initiative of the Year - Japan category at the Insurance Asia Awards 2026 for its world-first life insurance underwriting transformation, New Business 2.0 (NB2.0). The all-aspect generative AI-powered solution has directly targeted bottlenecks created by sequential, multi-step underwriting workflows, wherein multiple rule-engine errors or warnings can compound review time per case.

Rather than deploying a single generalised AI, NB2.0 orchestrates 12 domain-specialised AI agents that perform underwriting assessments in parallel, covering medical risk, occupational hazards, sanctions and anti-social screening, document extraction, information gathering, consistency checks, and additional specialised risk assessments.

Each domain agent is independently maintainable, enabling rapid updates when regulations, underwriting guidelines, or emerging risk patterns change. The platform is also modular and reusable across products and can be extended to other functions.

At the heart of the solution is a human-in-the-loop underwriting model that augments underwriters — automating routine analysis whilst preserving expert judgement, explainability, and governance. It generates draft new business to-dos, draft underwriting comments, and a clear rationale or basis for judgements, allowing underwriters to focus on true expert decision-making rather than repetitive preparation.

At the same time, NB2.0 formalises implicit human judgements into structured knowledge formats so that decisions remain consistent with Zurich’s risk appetite whilst becoming repeatable and scalable. This institutionalisation of expertise reduces dependency on individual underwriters and stabilises quality over time.

“NB2.0 sets a new benchmark for modern underwriting: a world-first solution grounded in real underwriting complexity, backed by measurable operational outcomes, governed through a human-in-the-loop model, and engineered to integrate with legacy systems rather than destabilise them,” the company said.

The Insurance Asia Awards, the premier awards programme for the insurance sector in the Asia Pacific region, celebrates the industry’s trailblazers. It recognises companies that have achieved outstanding milestones, set new benchmarks, and transformed the insurance landscape through cutting-edge innovation.

The Insurance Asia Awards is presented by Insurance Asia Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2027 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's significant impact on its customers with exceptional products, services, and solutions in the insurance industry, you may reach Julie Anne Nuñez-Difuntorum at (+65) 3158 1386 ext 242 or [email protected].