Ai4All - Irish Life's Personal Productivity Tool of Choice Qorus-NTT DATA Innovation in Insurance Awards 2026

Ai4All is our internally built, model‑agnostic generative AI assistant and Europe’s individual productivity tool of choice, designed to be safe with personal and commercially sensitive information whilst remaining cost‑effective and highly customisable for our business. It is architected for everyday productivity and available irrespective of line of business, department, role or experience, enabling employees to draft, summarise, analyse and translate content quickly within a secure environment that is integrated with our identity and access management. Our core objectives are to liberate capacity, improve AI literacy, and enhance both employee and customer experiences by putting a powerful, regulated AI assistant directly in the hands of our people.

We created Ai4All in response to a clear strategic question: should we build our own AI assistant or rely on subscription‑based enterprise solutions such as Microsoft 365 Copilot or ChatGPT Enterprise? Our journey began with a failed attempt to create an internal AI assistant that resulted in a poor user experience, and external Microsoft 365 Copilot trials that did not deliver tangible value, control, or the flexibility needed to reflect our specific processes, systems and data. Data sovereignty was non‑negotiable: we needed an AI platform where data does not leave our organisation. Ai4All is safe to use with PII and commercially sensitive documents, reducing the risk of colleagues turning to unsanctioned tools. At the same time, we lacked a foundational capability to rapidly deploy AI at scale and to build the AI literacy essential for our employees and wider business.

The competitive landscape is dominated by powerful enterprise GenAI offerings, notably Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise and other subscription‑based tools, many hosted on Azure OpenAI and using GPT-5. These have taken steps to address data sovereignty concerns by offering EU‑based infrastructure, but ultimate control over data residency and retention remains with the provider (OpenAI or Microsoft), meaning sensitive data may still be processed or stored outside the EU. By choosing to build Ai4All, we differentiated ourselves from these competitors with guaranteed data sovereignty, full control over where data is stored and processed, and the ability to select, upgrade or change models on our terms as the AI landscape evolves. Ai4All delivers proven productivity gains at a significantly lower long‑term cost than subscription‑based enterprise GenAI tools, because we only pay for what we use whilst retaining deep control and flexibility.

Our approach was inspired by emerging “build‑your‑own” strategies from leading financial institutions such as Deloitte, JP Morgan and BNP Paribas, which demonstrated that internal AI platforms can be both safer and more tailored than generic enterprise offerings. We decided to “build not buy”, hosted the solution internally in Azure, and partnered with an AI start‑up (Kreoh) and Kainos to supplement in‑house expertise and capability. Using agile and DevOps practices, the first version of Ai4All was built and deployed into production in just 12 weeks and successfully piloted with 150 users in Q4 2024. Encouraged by early value, we scaled to 1,000 users, extended the pilot, and secured executive approval at the European AI Forum in September 2025 for an organisation‑wide rollout.

Delivering Ai4All required close collaboration across multiple departments. European Technology and cloud platform teams designed a secure, scalable architecture and integrated Ai4All with identity and access management. Procurement and Legal teams used Ai4All for regulatory compliance (including DORA) and became “super users”, inspiring bulk upload functionality that evolved into Team Libraries with access to over 5,000 documents. Risk and Compliance, including Internal Audit and colleagues such as Rory Gallagher at ILG, became one of the largest cohorts with more than 100 users, leveraging Ai4All for document drafting, regulatory analysis, compliance testing and reporting. Customer Services teams in the UK, ILG and CLE adopted Ai4All early for complaint handling, using it to summarise complaint timelines and write more empathic outbound communications. Actuarial teams in CLUK and ILG and Wealth Management teams (Unio and Keyridge, where 90% of colleagues have Ai4All) have all become power users, particularly for complex document review, fraud prevention, performance analysis and instant business summaries for sales targets. More than 50 Ai4All Champions now support adoption, training and local experimentation across the business.

From a results perspective, Ai4All is already operating at scale. Building on our Wave 2 rollout to around 3,300 employees (58% of the organisation), we now have approval for Wave 3, which will extend Ai4All access to 5,000 users – representing 85% of our in‑scope organisation and 91% of Irish Life colleagues. Telemetry and survey data show estimated time savings of around 1.7–1.8 days per user per calendar month, equivalent to efficiency gains of around 10% at individual level. Team capability (no-code team libraries, shareable prompts and capability for business uers to create knowledge assistants in seconds) have been successfully piloted and are forecasting efficiency gains of more than 20% and will be rolled out from March 2026 along with new features such as web search and code intepreter services for business specific use cases. Ai4All has already been recognised externally, achieving runner‑up in the Best AI and ML Project category at Digital Business Ireland’s National Digital Award. Internally, user feedback highlights concrete business value: procurement significantly reduced the time to compare supplier terms and now mitigates risk and accelerates onboarding of approved low‑risk suppliers from weeks to days; complaint teams report specific tasks reduced by up to 50% and faster, more empathic responses; risk, legal and asset management teams report “a week review of a legal document in one day” and instant business summaries for sales targets. Overall, Ai4All has already created efficiency gains of more than 10%, improved employee and adviser experience, and in some cases enhanced the end customer experience.

Beyond productivity, Ai4All has become a strategic enabler and organisation‑wide brand for AI, aligned to our European AI strategy of “empowering the whole organisation (through AI) to unlock value, liberate capacity and deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences”. It supports our priorities around customer excellence, operational efficiency, sustainable growth, capital optimisation and talent development by democratising access to AI, improving AI literacy, and preparing our workforce for the future by helping people “learn AI by doing”. Our adoption principles of confidence, care and curiosity emphasise safe, secure use with PII and commercially sensitive data, the importance of human oversight, and the value of experimentation supported by a strong network of champions, in‑app assistance and a resource hub.