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The latest from Subcontext
Product launches, engineering write-ups, and notes from the field on putting AI assistants to work in financial services.
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Subcontext brings protection distribution into ChatGPT and Claude
UK insurers and brokers can now distribute protection products inside ChatGPT and Claude. Consumers can ask about life cover, get a price built from the product's own rules, check eligibility, have exclusions explained and book a callback without leaving the AI conversation, with governance and an audit trail built in.
Alain Desmier and Mike Laming
22 September 2026 · 4 min read
The AI insurance conversation
newdistribution
The protection gap is a conversation gap.
Our series on AI distribution in protection insurance: what's changing, what it means for insurers and advisers, and how to get more conversations started.
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Adverts on ChatGPT will change protection distribution
OpenAI's 16 September announcement unveils a new, AI-native advertising format: instead of sponsoring keywords and sending people to a website, brands sponsor and start conversations: a shift from cost-per-click to click-to-chat. For protection, where cover is bought around life events, that moves the point of interception from Google to inside ChatGPT, and hands the brand a consumer who has already talked through their situation.
Alain Desmier
17 September 2026 · 5 min read
What will the first AI life insurance broker look like?
Most visions of an "AI broker" just bolt a chatbot onto today's sales process, aiming to get the consumer onto the phone. The more ambitious possibility is that natural language reverses the direction of the whole market: the conversation begins with the consumer's circumstances, and the product, process and provider assemble around them. A look at what the first real AI life insurance broker will actually be: always available, escalating to humans when needed, built around the Consumer Duty, and reshaping the relationship between protection need, intention and process.
Alain Desmier
8 September 2026 · 6 min read
The AI protection distribution race is underway
Aviva has fired the starting gun. Alain Desmier on what AI-native distribution means for protection: closing the conversation gap, AI as a direct distribution channel, shorter and more flexible products, and the bravery it will take to win.
Alain Desmier
25 June 2026 · 5 min read
AI will create millions of new protection policies
Around 31 million UK adults hold no pure protection product, and 18 million have never actively considered their protection needs. The protection gap in 2026 is a conversation gap, and conversational AI, which more than half of UK adults now use, is the technology that will finally close it.
Alain Desmier
11 June 2026 · 4 min read
Introducing Subcontext
Subcontext is a quote and bind platform that plugs directly into an insurer's underwriting and product rules, with a decision layer on top that lets an AI agent speak to customers through WhatsApp, email, SMS and web chat under the insurer's own brand. Rather than running a scripted chatbot, it uses a conversational agent that gathers context, asks the right next question, and progresses the customer from intent to bound cover in one continuous conversation.
Alain Desmier and Mike Laming
26 May 2026 · 5 min read