IndiaFirst Life Expands Salesforce Partnership to Deploy AI Agents in Underwriting and Claims

MUMBAI — IndiaFirst Life Insurance has deepened its technology partnership with Salesforce to deploy AI agents across three core operational areas: new business underwriting, customer service, and micro-insurance claims processing. The announcement was made by company executives alongside representatives from Salesforce South Asia.

Under the expanded deployment, the Bank of Baroda subsidiary will embed Salesforce’s Agentforce platform into its workflow. For new business underwriting, the AI agents will review financial, medical, and KYC documents, flag discrepancies, evaluate risk, and suggest decisions. In customer service, the agents are designed to classify cases, analyze sentiment, and draft responses. For micro-insurance and PMJJBY claims, the technology will verify documents, spot missing data, and route exceptions for manual human review.

This initiative follows an earlier Salesforce implementation covering CRM, sales, claims, and business process management, which was completed within a 24-month window. IndiaFirst Life's proprietary sales application, UNIFY, is connected to the Salesforce infrastructure in real time via MuleSoft.

The insurer also released operational metrics from its previous technology rollout. According to the company, straight-through processing rates increased by 10 per cent, M0 conversion improved by 15 per cent, supervisor productivity rose by 15 per cent, product rollout time decreased by 40 per cent, and the login-to-issuance turnaround time dropped by 50 per cent. Managing Director and CEO Rushabh Gandhi stated that the company's Net Promoter Score (NPS) has reached an all-time high.

Gandhi noted that technology has been treated as a strategic differentiator since the company's founding in 2009, rather than a mere support function. He designated 2026 as the company’s "year of the agentic" and addressed potential cost concerns by stating that investments in agentic AI will be cross-subsidised from other business segments, keeping overall cost ratios stable.

Discussing the broader impact of automation on employment, Arundhati Bhattacharya, President and CEO of Salesforce South Asia, referenced Salesforce's internal metrics, noting that a significant share of incoming customer cases are now handled by autonomous agents, allowing employees to focus on more complex tasks.

Regarding return on investment, Gandhi cautioned against relying strictly on short-term financial calculations. He emphasized that customer experience, reduction in grievances, and long-term scalability are equally critical metrics to consider.

IndiaFirst Life, which operates across more than 90 per cent of India’s pin codes, confirmed that it has no plans to scale back its human agent network despite expanding its AI deployment.

"The integration of AI agents into core operations like underwriting and claims processing demonstrates how traditional financial institutions are leveraging technology to improve turnaround times and operational efficiency. IndiaFirst Life's approach shows that automation can scale backend processes while allowing human resources to focus on complex decision-making and customer relationship management. For businesses evaluating similar transformations, balancing technology investments with customer experience and scalable infrastructure is key to long-term success." — Dr. Shishir Gupta, Founder & CEO, StartupLanes