Sun Life: AI efforts
Sun Life Financial has built a broad AI program spanning employees, advisors and clients — anchored by Sun Life Asks, an internal gen-AI platform on AWS Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude, and the award-winning Iris service-desk agent. Part of InsureBench's overview of AI in insurance; every figure is sourced.
Where Sun Life ranks on AI
Sun Life is featured in the 2026 Evident AI Index for Insurance.5 Its internal gen-AI platform, Sun Life Asks, runs on Amazon Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude and handles 10,000+ employee queries a week (600,000+ in its first 11 months).1
Its agentic service-desk agent, Iris, won a 2025 CIO Award and cut average resolution time by 83%, projected to save 24,000+ hours a year.2
NA/Europe insurers
The AI build-out
From a client digital coach to an employee gen-AI platform and an agentic service desk.
Ella digital coach
Sun Life launches Ella, an AI-driven "digital coach" delivering proactive client nudges, later on Google Assistant.4
New CIO
Laura Money is named EVP & Chief Information Officer, later leading the enterprise gen-AI approach.6
Sun Life Asks launches
An internal gen-AI platform on AWS Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude rolls out to employees.1
Iris wins a CIO Award
Sun Life's GenAI + agentic service-desk agent Iris wins a 2025 CIO Award, cutting resolution time 83%.2
AI-ready enterprise
Sun Life details a three-pillar data & AI mandate and a "right tool, right job" philosophy.3
Evident AI Index
Sun Life is featured among the 30 ranked insurers.5
Inside the programme
An employee gen-AI platform, an agentic service desk, a client coach, and underwriting automation.
Sun Life Asks
An internal gen-AI platform on AWS Bedrock with Anthropic's Claude, handling thousands of employee queries a week.1
Iris
An award-winning GenAI + agentic service-desk agent resolving 80%+ of queries in under two minutes.2
Ella
An AI-driven "digital coach" delivering proactive nudges to clients, integrated with Google Assistant.4
Straight-through
A rules-plus-algorithms engine approves ~30% of life/CI applications with no underwriter touch.7
"Iris combines GenAI and agentic AI with practical application — delivering real-time value while creating a blueprint for applying GenAI at scale across Sun Life."
Laura Money, EVP & Chief Information & Technology Innovation Officer, Sun Life — 20252Trusted innovation, governed by data ethics
Sun Life runs a Global Privacy and Data Ethics Centre of Excellence and publishes responsible-AI principles — human oversight, fairness and non-discrimination, transparency and accountability — with a Chief Privacy and Data Ethics Officer.
Whether those models are right, and fair, is exactly what an insurance AI benchmark measures.
- Global Privacy & Data Ethics Centre of Excellence
- Principles: human oversight, fairness, transparency, accountability
- AWS Bedrock + Claude as the gen-AI foundation
- "Right tool, right job" model selection
Why this matters for benchmarking
Sun Life is automating life underwriting and scaling gen-AI across service. The more decisions models drive, the more it matters whether they're right — which is what InsureBench measures. See the methodology.
Sources
- AWS — Sun Life case study (Sun Life Asks on Amazon Bedrock + Claude). aws.amazon.com
- Insurance Business Canada — Sun Life wins 2025 CIO Award for AI service desk Iris (Aug 14 2025). insurancebusinessmag.com
- CDO Magazine — Building an AI-ready enterprise at Sun Life (Dec 5 2025). cdomagazine.tech
- insurance-canada.ca — Sun Life's Ella digital coach available to all Canadians (Feb 14 2018). insurance-canada.ca
- Evident Insights — AI Index for Insurance 2026. evidentinsights.com
- PR Newswire — Sun Life names Laura Money as CIO (May 28 2020). prnewswire.com
- Insurance Business Canada — Sun Life's underwriting straight-through processing. insurancebusinessmag.com