Aviva Expands AI Underwriting to Critical Illness

Aviva has announced the expansion of its AI underwriting summarisation tool to support individual critical illness (CI) insurance applications. The move represents another industry-first innovation, allowing the insurer to summarise most individual protection applications where a medical report is required.

The tool was the first of its kind in the protection market when it originally launched for individual life insurance applications in November 2025. Since its introduction, the technology has delivered significant improvements in both underwriting efficiency and turnaround times.

Targeting the application front end

Aviva’s AI underwriting capability focuses specifically on the front end of the customer journey. The primary goal is to support underwriters in making decisions more quickly from the point of application, a stage where speed and clarity are most vital for the applicant.

By becoming the first insurer to offer this technology within the CI market, Aviva is building on its previous delivery. The company has successfully re-used and extended the capability for CI underwriting and reported the same high levels of accuracy during extensive testing phases.

Managing medical complexity

The expansion increases the sophistication of the insurer's AI solutions by enabling the tool to handle the added complexity inherent in CI underwriting. By validating the quality and accuracy of summarisation across a wider range of conditions and risk factors, the firm has demonstrated that the technology can reliably support more complex cases.

The tool utilises generative AI to analyse medical reports, meaning that lengthy and complex documents can be transformed into short summaries. These contains only the relevant information required for specialists to review, reducing the time underwriters spend on each case by approximately half.

Robert Morrison, Chief Underwriting Officer at Aviva, explains: “Building on the recent launch of our life insurance AI summarisation underwriting tool, this is another important step in our commitment to making protection insurance faster, simpler and more accessible for our customers using generative AI.”

“Throughout development, we’ve focused on enhancing the stages of the underwriting journey that deliver the most material gains for customers, advisers and our underwriters in both service and efficiency. Our current capability also extends to post-application auditing, and our next focus will be on delivering summarisation for income protection.

By bringing AI summarisation to the protection market, we’re helping more customers get the protection they need more quickly.”

Where else are insurers using AI? 

The firm’s AI strategy reflects a wider industry trend of insurers embracing AI, both generative and conversational, as the benefits become clear to industries everywhere. 

Recently, Neptune Flood Insurance and Experian have moved within OpenAI’s ChatGPT to offer insurance products through the app. Consumers can now create a conversation with AI to enquire about, and purchase, insurance products. 

Similarly, Allianz recently earned international recognition for its Global AI Run, a massive upskilling initiative reaching 144,000 employees across 70 countries. By prioritising practical application over theory, the programme integrates tools like AllianzGPT and Project Nemo – the latter reducing claims processing times by 80%.

The strategy combines inclusive, tiered learning for all staff with expert partnerships, such as technical training with Sorbonne University. This measured rollout ensures digital literacy at every level, from foundational ethics to executive strategy, driving measurable ROI and operational agility through a future-ready, AI-confident workforce.