Ergo to Invest €130 Million in GenAI, Leans on India for Global Tech Push
The investment will fund the development of core AI capabilities across markets and support the company's ambition to become the leading digital insurer in its core geographies by 2025.
'This is purely a technology investment—building the infrastructure for GenAI. It does not include operating costs or manpower,' said Mark Klein, Chief Digital Officer of Ergo Group. 'We are in the process of scaling AI across all key processes in multiple countries.
The time for pilots is over. These systems now have to deliver measurable business value.'
Klein added that Ergo has already deployed over 110 AI algorithms across business functions, and is focused on expanding these use cases across seven European markets. 'Scaling is essential. AI doesn't come cheap. If you don't reuse assets and deploy solutions across markets, you will never arrive at a sustainable business case,' he said.
India has emerged as a crucial hub for the group's technology operations. Ergo's technology services arm in Mumbai, which employs over 600 professionals, acts as a global capability center for the group.
'We are coming more into a global delivery model, and India offers a clear opportunity,' Klein said. 'India is becoming more and more important for us, not just as a growing market, but as a source of young, tech-savvy talent.
The infrastructure here, including the Indian Stack, enables us to implement digital innovations faster than in Europe.'
Klein credited HDFC ERGO, Ergo's Indian joint venture, with pioneering several of the group's technology initiatives. 'In 2016, India was the first to implement a robot in our group. I took that back and by 2017 we had deployed robots across our operations. Today, we run over 500 bots globally,' he said.
'We have a Champions League across our markets based on KPIs like digital sales and process automation. India consistently ranks in the top two.
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Parthanil Ghosh, Director at HDFC ERGO, said the company is not only adopting global tech but also driving innovation within the group. 'We have completely overhauled our core systems using Duck Creek, a low-code, modular platform. It allows us to launch new products faster and meet regulatory requirements more efficiently,' he said.
Ghosh added that HDFC ERGO has put generative AI into production for several use cases, including underwriting assistance and SME quote generation. 'We built a platform called HEIQ, which takes unstructured data from brokers and generates quotes in under three minutes. This is a live solution, not a proof-of-concept,' he said.
The company has also partnered with IIT Bombay to build secure small language models (SLMs) tailored to its business.
'We can't risk exposing our customer data to public models. So we built proprietary SLMs over foundational models like ChatGPT or Gemini in a fully secure environment,' Ghosh said.
Klein said these innovations are being closely watched by the group. 'We regularly benchmark our markets, and HDFC ERGO's implementation of core system upgrades and GenAI is being tracked across the group. What they are doing is not just best practice for India—it's becoming best practice for Ergo globally.'
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