Continuous Learning With AI: Aflac’s Shelia Anderson

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:02)
AI-based automation means less human manual work.
What opportunities does that unlock for one insurance provider? Find out on today's episode.

**Shelia Anderson** (0:12)
I'm Shelia Anderson from Aflac, and you're listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:18)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, Professor of Analytics at Boston College. I'm also the AI and Business Strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:37)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG and one of the leaders of our AI business. Together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI since 2017, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:03)
Our guest today is Shelia Anderson, senior vice president and chief information officer at Aflac.
Shelia, thanks for taking the time to join us from my beautiful home state of Georgia. Welcome.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (1:14)
Thank you for making time.

**Shelia Anderson** (1:15)
Thank you. Good to be here.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:17)
Okay, let's get started. Aflac is a really well known company. I think it's the largest provider of supplemental insurance in the United States.
Let's start there. Shelia, maybe tell us a bit about your current role. What do you do at Aflac?

**Shelia Anderson** (1:31)
I actually joined Aflac in July of 22, and you previously stated as Chief Information Officer, I have responsibility for overseeing all of Aflac's digital services division in the US, and basically driving the technology strategy in support of all of our company's US business, aligning the work that we do to our business objectives.
I'll start with sharing a bit about Aflac, the company itself. Aflac specializes in supplemental benefits, accident, cancer, critical illness, hospitalization, and life insurance. And we provide value to our policy holders by basically helping them to bridge the gap for unexpected cost that your standard medical insurance may not cover.
Aflac was founded in 1955, actually as a cancer insurance company. And today we're a $26 billion company operating out of both the US and Japan, covering over 50 million customers. You know us best, most likely, by the Aflac Duck, which for 20 years has been our international brand icon. And one of the things that I've really enjoyed learning about coming into Aflac is the My Special Aflac Duck, which is an innovative robotic companion for children with cancer or sickle cell disease. And it's a cornerstone of the Aflac Childhood Cancer Campaign that spans over 28 years and more than 165 million in contributions. That program launched in 2018, and to date we've distributed more than 21,000 of these robotic ducks across the US, Puerto Rico, Northern Ireland, and Japan. So that's one of those things where Aflac has taken the brand and is doing a really great thing by serving children who are going through a challenging time. And it's just one way that we can give back to the community that we're serving.

**Sam Ransbotham** (3:14)
Tell us a little bit about the role of artificial intelligence at Aflac.

**Shelia Anderson** (3:18)
Aflac's approach to AI, like many other companies, really came out of a necessity to innovate. There was a major push, of course, that we all had during the pandemic. And in lieu of those face-to-face interactions, the digital enablement to support our customer experience had to come to the forefront of a lot of the business. Aflac included in that. The contraction in the market also meant that companies had to learn to become more efficient.
And so for us, we were looking to artificial intelligence and machine learning to do both of those things. To help to improve our customer experience and also to help us streamline our operations.

**Sam Ransbotham** (3:54)
May we give us an example of that? What's the voice you've used AI?

**Shelia Anderson** (3:58)
The area that we focused largely on has been in the claims processing space. Our claims process, as in many insurers, is a complex and time-consuming task. It involves tremendous expertise.
And it also is subject to various regulations. We had about 46 of our claims that were fully automated or what we call straight through processing, primarily wellness claims. We saw these as an opportunity to automate because we don't require additional proof of loss for these. And we can accept the answers to the claim form questions along with attestation from the policyholder to serve as proof.
Also 49% of our manual claims result in payouts less than, for example, $200. We spend a great deal of effort, whether they're large or small, manually managing these claims. So for that, we had a significant opportunity to automate in the space. AI gave us the opportunity to do that. And our goal, of course, is to ensure a frictionless experience, paying our claims for our insureds as quickly as possible so that they see the value and then they persist and stay with Aflac longer as a policyholder and as a customer.