Zurich Insurance Chief Information & Digital Officer Ericson Chan: The C-Suite Interview

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From assessing risk to setting rates, AI is a transformative force in the realm of insurance. For Ericson Chan, the chief information and digital officer of Zurich Insurance Group, its greatest power lies in streamlining the customer experience.

“We focus on making things simpler for our customers,” says Chan, who was named a top tech leader on Forbes’ CIO Next list this year. “We need to know our customer better…It’s about what kind of products we should be offering.”

Zurich hired Chan in late 2020 to accelerate its digital transformation. The former CEO of China’s Ping An Technology has created an integrated data platform to drive better decision making, and One Zurich, an app to help employees, visitors and contractors navigate the insurer’s operations, as well as a global API marketplace, making it easier to integrate with Zurich’s products.

And that’s just the start. He’s helping to integrate generative AI in analyzing claims data, patent investigations and risk modeling. That’s in addition to acquisitions like Alpha Chat, an AI platform for messaging and chat automation, and Office Samurai, which specializes in process improvement and automation.

In our conversation, Chan discusses his career path, the business environment in his former hometown of Hong Kong, and the role that technology plays. No matter how dazzling a technology might be, he says, it’s just a tool in achieving better outcomes. As he puts it: “We need to know where we can make a difference.”