Z Buddy AI assistant for agents (Zurich Malaysia)
by Zurich Malaysia (Zurich Insurance Group) · Primary insurer
Market unit: MY
Zurich Malaysia launched Z Buddy in July 2025, an AI-powered virtual assistant for its insurance and takaful agents, accessed through WhatsApp. In its initial phase it answers agents' questions on travel and motor insurance/takaful, claims procedures and general product information, including coverage details, with real-time replies around the clock, so agents can respond to customers faster. Planned enhancements include generating motor quotations and guiding agents through tailored customer requests. Zurich Malaysia did not disclose the underlying AI technology or vendor, and no usage figures have been published. The assistant serves the distribution force only, not end customers.
1 free view left this month
Business context
- Value chain steps
- Marketing and distributionCustomer service
- Insurance branches
- Motor vehicle insurance
- Application scope
- Internal only
- Country or market unit
- MY
Value and impact
- Added value category
- Efficiency gainCustomer experience improvement
Technical details
- AI category
- Conversational AINatural language processing
Compliance and governance
- EU AI Act risk category
- Not available
- EU AI Act role
- Not applicable
- Relevant policies
- Other
Metadata
- Development type
- Minimum viable product
- Go-live date
- Jul 15, 2025
Publications over time
When this solution was reported on. Rumors are unverified mentions.
Community
Average rating
Comments
Log in to join the discussion.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment.
Related solutions
Since September 2021 Baloise has used a virtual voice assistant, developed with Spitch and NTT DATA, in its Swiss non-life customer service. Callers state their concern in standard German or Swiss German dialect instead of using the phone menu; the assistant recognises the intent, mainly claims notifications, and transfers the call with an on-screen text summary for the agent. At launch about 40% of German-language non-life enquiries passed through the assistant and 85% of callers reached the right expert at the first attempt; French was planned for a later stage. Spitch's case study (updated April 2025) describes a hybrid on-premise and cloud setup. Status after the December 2025 Helvetia Baloise merger is not documented.
HUK24, the online subsidiary of HUK-Coburg, has run a virtual assistant in the contact and help area of its website since 2017; it is also embedded in the contact form to answer questions before an e-mail is sent. As reported in 2022, it was built on IBM Watson Assistant with Watson Discovery for search, hosted on IBM Cloud in Frankfurt, and about 1.5 million customer inquiries per year went through it; HUK24 monitors answer quality and request volumes with SAS Viya dashboards. In April 2026 HUK-Coburg's CEO said the assistant reduces HUK24's roughly 900,000 annual customer inquiries by more than 30% (about 300,000 cases). It was rated 'best in class' in the 2022 ComputerBild/Statista digital assistant test. HUK-Coburg reports about 60 AI use cases in production overall (2026).
BarmeniaGothaer, the German insurance group formed by Barmenia and Gothaer, uses "Mina", an AI voice agent from Parloa, to route incoming calls at its Wuppertal site to more than 50 possible destinations. Mina was among the first agents on Parloa's AI Agent Management Platform and replaced an earlier rule-based Parloa bot; it runs on the Genesys Cloud contact-centre platform implemented by Damovo. According to CIO (May 2026), about 6,000 calls a day reach the contact centre, around 89% are now routed directly to the right contact and the bot takes more than 1,000 calls a day off the switchboard, which previously had to forward over 1,500 calls a day manually. Parloa (June 2025, vendor-reported) cites 90% relief of the Wuppertal switchboard.