Generative AI is transforming workplaces worldwide, with professionals expecting to save 12 hours weekly—equivalent to 600 hours annually—within five years. At Sun Life, this revolution is already underway.
In 2023, Sun Life launched its award-winning GenAI chatbot, Sun Life Asks, empowering employees with instant answers to streamline tasks. With nearly 1 million queries addressed in its first year, the tool exemplifies how AI can enhance efficiency and create time for meaningful work.
We spoke with Laura Money, Sun Life’s Executive Vice President & Chief Information and Technology Innovation Officer, about how the company is leveraging AI to innovate, break silos, and foster impactful client connections.
How is your organization evolving to keep pace in the digital age, and what key initiatives are driving this transformation?
LM: Innovation is at the centre of our digital strategy, and we’re committed to fostering a culture that drives innovation across all our teams. There have been an incredible number of technological developments in the last few years —with more still to come—but ultimately, the way we evaluate each is simple: how can this help us deliver on our Purpose to help clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives? Our Purpose keeps us grounded and allows us to see the opportunities in front of us for what they are.
That said, technology continues to advance at lightspeed, and so do the expectations and needs of our colleagues and clients. People are looking for more personalization and faster, more intuitive digital experiences. They now measure us against their last best digital experience, which is why for Sun Life, it’s so important to stay on top of emerging technologies like GenAI to ensure we’re delivering on that expectation. An example of this would be Sun Life Asks, our internal GenAI-powered chatbot. We launched this a year ago with the intention of delivering more efficient, intuitive workplace tools to our colleagues, and it has delivered all that and more. The feedback from our people has been incredible. As we mark the one-year anniversary of this launch, Sun Life Asks has supported employees with nearly a million queries, giving them time back to focus on more meaningful work.
Keeping pace is so important in today’s world, but it also comes with challenges that need to be balanced with risk, safety, and security. Respecting the privacy of our clients and employees is key to maintaining our reputation as a trusted and responsible business—which is ingrained in everything we do. It is so important to have the proper guardrails in place as you explore new technologies, and this is something that will always be the top priority for us.
What steps are you taking to prepare your workforce for the rapidly changing digital landscape, and how are employees embracing these changes?
LM: Preparing our workforce for the future is a top priority. In recent years, the way we work has changed significantly. Today, hybrid ways of working are a norm, which means the way knowledge and information is shared across organizations has shifted to digital. Technology is now so integrated into the business from a strategic point of view; however, technology is only as effective as the people using it. To fully reap the benefits of a tool like AI, the user needs to understand how to properly use it. At Sun Life, we’re being very purposeful about how we’re introducing these sorts of technologies to our internal teams so they can use it to truly increase their productivity, enhance their work-life balance and make their day-to-day tasks a little more fun.
With AI, for example, we are upskilling our employees through the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s (CIFAR) Destination AI course, available on our internal training platform. The course covers machine learning, GenAI, big data and deep learning, as well as the role we all play in shaping this emerging technology as it continues to evolve. Since we launched the course, more than 6,000 employees have completed the Destination AI training program.
We were also one of the first financial institutions to partner with AWS, our cloud service provider, to deploy our internal GenAI-powered chatbot, Sun Life Asks, which enables employees to find quick answers and assistance with daily tasks. This was launched in tandem with the CIFAR training, so our employees could take the training and learn about AI, then apply their learnings.
We have since launched other, more specific AI-powered tools, like one to assist our software engineers as they code. We also added a prompt engineering course to our internal learning platform to help our employees create more effective prompts when using GenAI chatbots. The benefit of these tools has been a more efficient, empowered workforce—freeing up more time for collaboration, learning and ideation.
When it comes to attracting and retaining tech talent, how do you stay competitive?
LM: The talent piece is so important. In today’s highly competitive market, it is almost impossible to attract or retain tech talent if your organization is not committed to innovation. We’re seeing young people and new grads experimenting with new technologies, building businesses and exploring certifications before ever entering the workforce. They’re curious, driven and resourceful, and to attract these types of people to our organization, we need to show that we are too. While there are lots of tech companies out there, none of them can match our almost 150-year culture of being open and curious. We have the right combination of experience, resources, and stability behind us, and a culture that is committed to being at the forefront of new technologies.
Equally as important as attraction is retention. Sun Life has a longstanding commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace—one in which our employees are empowered to bring their authentic selves to work each day. By embracing unique perspectives, we create an environment that enables more effective problem-solving, team-building and collaboration, which results in more innovative solutions.
Ultimately, what drives us is delivering exceptional client experiences. So as technologies evolve, we’ll continue to see diversity of thought, paired with the right opportunities for upskilling and reskilling, enable our people and processes to evolve alongside it. That’s really special, and a big part of our culture at Sun Life.
As you mark the one-year anniversary of your internal GenAI-powered chatbot, what impact has it had on your organization?
LM: Since we launched Sun Life Asks in 2023, we have observed the transformative impact of this technology in real time. In terms of measurable impact, the chatbot has supported employees with nearly a million queries, helping save anywhere from a few minutes up to hours each time, depending on the complexity of the use case. In fact, Sun Life Asks is supporting employees with almost 5,000 queries daily and we’re now getting up to 10,000 visits weekly. Our employees genuinely find the tool helpful. Not only have they tried it—they continue to use it to simplify daily tasks. In fact, we were recognized as a CIO Awards Canada winner for our innovation with Sun Life Asks.
As we continue our explorations with GenAI, we’re using learnings from Sun Life Asks to inform future innovations. Our newly launched GenAI-powered service desk chatbot, Iris, is an example of how we’re applying these learnings as we scale this technology. Iris is designed to provide employees with speedy, accurate answers to common queries, without having to speak to a service desk agent. The tool has given our service desk agents time back to focus on more complex queries.
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made and are continuing to optimize our GenAI-powered tools for internal use as well as looking for ways to apply our learnings to other areas of our business.
What excites you most about the future of AI?
LM: GenAI is an undeniable opportunity for organizations to create quicker and more seamless end-to-end client experiences, improve employee productivity and solve problems that we were not able or could not afford to solve in the past. That said, when it comes to harnessing the potential of AI, we’re only at the tip of the iceberg right now.
To put this in context, I like to think of GenAI like the invention of the wheel: it’s something that is so intuitive that, once you’re exposed to it, it seems almost impossible to think it didn’t always exist. And like the wheel, GenAI’s applicability is so vast that, in time, it will be so ingrained in our day-to-day that we won’t know how we existed without it.
The wheel was invented approximately 6,000 years ago—which is very new in the scheme of human history—but only in the last 50-60 years did we put it on luggage. If you were in an airport 60 years ago, no one had wheels except the carts that the porters used. It took us 6,000 years to figure out how to put wheels on luggage! With AI, we’re already observing its transformative impact in real time.
While this is only the beginning of the AI journey, we’re embracing this new technology and are sure to have some amazing learnings along the way. We still have a lot of testing and learning to do, but I’m excited to see how we can leverage this technology to better meet our clients’ and employees’ evolving needs. This evolution isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about creating deeper, more meaningful connections within our teams and with our clients as well.