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Product launches, engineering write-ups, and notes from the field on putting AI assistants to work in financial services.
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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
September 17, 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
September 08, 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
June 25, 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
June 11, 2026 · 4 min read