(Yicai) April 14 -- Ping An Insurance Group's service approach is transitioning from a mobile app to an artificial intelligence agent-centric model using the latest technologies, according to the chief technology officer of the Chinese insurance giant.

AI tech is turning the concept of "one client, one account, one platform" from an ideal into reality, Wang Xiaohang said recently in an interview with Yicai. Ping An Insurance is leveraging AI agents to explore a unified pathway for the integrated use of its various financial services, he noted.

Ping An Insurance boasts 250 million customers across an ecosystem covering banking, insurance, healthcare, elderly care, and other sectors, Wang noted. While the diverse service portfolio forms its core competitiveness, users have to repeatedly switch between apps to access different services, creating a fragmented experience, he pointed out.

With AI, customers can access Ping An Insurance's financial, medical, health, and lifestyle services with just one sentence, covering online services as well as offline resources, including hospitals and other health institutions, car owner services, and rescue services, Wang noted.

In the future, users will be able to access Ping An Insurance's services across multiple terminals beyond mobile phones, including smart speakers, corporate health management portals, and telemedicine platforms, he said.

Collaboration Between AI Agents

AI products that have emerged over the past three years mainly fall into two categories: conversational, represented by ByteDance's Doubao, and task-based, such as Manus and Alibaba's Qwen. Most serve daily life and consumption needs, making them far from sufficient for Ping An Insurance.

Due to the financial, medical, and health services provided by Ping An Insurance being highly professional, rigorous, and responsibility-bearing, the agents developed and deployed by the company must possess strong professional capabilities and trustworthy credibility in their respective sectors, Wang stressed.

Therefore, Ping An Insurance will not develop general-purpose AI tools, but instead equip its AI agents with high-threshold expertise in financial or medical and health services that match or even surpass industry professionals, he said, adding that it will also evolve from single AI to professional collaborative services among multiple agents.

Elevating the professional capabilities of financial and medical AI agents to match or even replace human experts requires not only equivalent professional knowledge but also alignment in thinking and decision-making logic with real experts, Wang pointed out.

In addition, professional services are rarely delivered by a single individual or role in real-world scenarios, but mostly through a team, Wang noted. For example, medical services require multidisciplinary consultations, while financial services demand coordination among family financial advisors, wealth management experts, and insurance specialists, he added.

"The same applies to AI agents. To deliver truly professional solutions, they must learn to collaborate when providing professional services to clients," Wang said.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev