Zurich Insurance Group has agreed to acquire Estonia-based artificial intelligence (AI) start-up AlphaChat.
Founded in 2017, Estonia-based AlphaChat provides conversational AI technology for customer service automation.
In a statement, Zurich said that the acquisition would “further enhance” its digital capabilities and help it create “a consistent and efficient approach to developing intelligent virtual assistants across businesses, for both internal and external purposes.”
“Technology is playing a critical role in advancing Zurich’s customer-focused strategy by differentiating the offering, improving the customer experience, and streamlining interactions,” Zurich said in its statement. “Conversational AI is central to meeting increasing demand from customers for personalized products and services that are available around the clock.”
“We have spent decades to learn how to communicate with computers through different programming languages,” said Ericson Chan, group information and digital officer at Zurich. “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.”
For his part, Indrek Vainu, chief executive officer of AlphaChat, said that he is “excited to join Zurich on their transformation journey.”
“Customer communications is increasingly moving to digital messaging channels,” said Vainu. “Building on our first-class team and on the strength of our product, Zurich is launching an intelligent automation centre of excellence in Estonia where we focus on creating AI-powered messaging automation solutions for Zurich customers globally.”
