Zurich acquires AI firm AlphaChat to advance digital transformation

Zurich Insurance Group has agreed to acquire Estonia-based company AlphaChat, which provides conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technology for customer service automation, to further enhance the group’s digital capabilities.

Founded in 2017, AlphaChat has built a messaging automation product capable of understanding natural language, authenticating users, providing personalised responses and executing transactions, making communication with customers seamless.

Zurich hopes the acquisition of AlphaChat will “considerably strengthen” its conversational AI capabilities and help the group create a consistent and efficient approach to developing Intelligent Virtual Assistants across businesses, for both internal and external purposes.

Ericson Chan (pictured), group chief information and digital officer, said: “We have spent decades to learn how to communicate with computers through different programming languages. Now it is time for computers to learn how to have a personal conversation with all of us. Natural language processing is key to further enhance customer experience, complementing human interaction in the most natural way. We are very pleased to have AlphaChat join Zurich to help us further advance our digital transformation.”

Indrek Vainu, chief executive officer of AlphaChat, added: “Customer communications is increasingly moving to digital messaging channels. We are excited to join Zurich on their digital transformation journey. Building on our first-class team and on the strength of our product Zurich is launching an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence in Estonia where we focus on creating AI-powered messaging automation solutions for Zurich customers globally.”

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