Sun Life recognized for innovative employee GenAI chatbot with 2024 CIO Award

• Secure chatbot empowers employees to safely experiment with GenAI
• Over 5,000 employees using the tool per week
• Propelled productivity and 229 per cent increase in use less than a year after launch

TORONTO, July 25, 2024 /CNW/ - Sun Life has been named a 2024 CIO Awards Canada winner for their Sun Life Asks GenAI chatbot. The CIO Awards Canada celebrate Canadian organizations and the teams within them that are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth, or improving relationships with customers. The award recognizes the tech world's most innovative organizations and accomplished leaders.

Sun Life Asks is an internal GenAI chatbot that enables employees to find quick answers and general assistance with daily tasks. Housed within Sun Life's existing technology ecosystem, the tool performs tasks similar to chatbots available externally and can help with everything from summarization of text to organizing ideas for a presentation or even analyzing the purpose or sentiment of an article.

"GenAI is an important part of our digital transformation and we are committed to safely innovating and adopting emerging technology," said Laura Money, Executive Vice-President, Chief Information and Technology Innovation Officer, Sun Life. "Our goal is to ensure that our employees have access to the benefits of a GenAI chatbot for work-related purposes, while keeping Client and company data safe. We're honoured that CIO Awards Canada has recognized Sun Life Asks as one of the most innovative projects for 2024." 

Sun Life Asks is helping employees develop skills for the future and in just eight short months since launch:

• Employees report saving minutes to hours each day on regular tasks and are reinvesting that time into work they find most meaningful.
• The tool has generated over 400,000 queries in the first 8 months, with 10,000 queries daily – in fact, use has climbed 229 per cent between launch and now.
• Over 2500 employees have continued to upskill to better understand AI through CIFAR's Destination AI course, embedding within our own internal training platform. The course covers machine learning, GenAI, big data and deep learning, as well as the role we all play in shaping this emerging technology as it continues to evolve.
• A new prompt training course also just launched internally to help employees learn strategies to write clearer prompts to generate better GenAI outputs. 

Sun Life is committed to digital leadership and to ensuring a focus on client impact by continuing to adopt and experiment with innovative technology. Our culture is rooted in safety and security which extends to our adoption of emerging technologies. Through technology like GenAI, Sun Life empowers its people to enhance their skills to propel our Purpose, to help clients achieve lifelong financial security and live healthier lives, forward.

About Sun Life

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing asset management, wealth, insurance and health solutions to individual and institutional Clients. Sun Life has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of March 31, 2024, Sun Life had total assets under management of $1.47 trillion. For more information, please visit www.sunlife.com. 

Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under the ticker symbol SLF.

About the CIO Awards Canada

The CIO Awards Canada celebrate Canadian organizations and the teams within them that are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth, or improving relationships with customers. It is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence. Because the award is given to company projects rather than individuals, it is an honour that everyone on Canadian team can take pride in.

About IDC 

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights. To learn more about IDC Canada, please visit www.idc.com/ca or follow us on Twitter at @idccanada and LinkedIn.

About CIO

CIO focuses on attracting the highest concentration of enterprise CIOs and business technology executives with unparalleled peer insight and expertise on business strategy, innovation, and leadership. As organizations grow with digital transformation, CIO provides its readers with key insights on career development, including certifications, hiring practices and skills development. The award-winning CIO portfolio provides business technology leaders with analysis and insight on information technology trends and a keen understanding of IT's role in achieving business goals. CIO is published by Foundry (formerly IDG Communications, Inc.) Company information is available at http://www.foundryco.com

Note to editors: All figures in Canadian dollars

Media Relations Contact:     
Kelsey Rutherford
Director 
Corporate Communications 
T. 416-317-6249
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SOURCE Sun Life Financial Canada

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