Avinash Naik: Reimagining Insurance Through the AI Lens

Like many computer science engineers, Avinash Naik of Bajaj General Insurance began his career motivated by the desire to build something meaningful. His early years in IT services taught him how to solve problems at scale, but the real spark was kindled by collaborating with peers who were constantly experimenting with emerging technologies. This culture of curiosity laid the foundation of his interest in innovation. 

As Naik transitioned from IT services to the business world, he found the freedom to experiment on a broader canvas. In 2014-2015, he began his first hands-on project with AI, using open-source tools for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and early speech-to-text applications. “Those were early years, but they laid the foundation for what was to come,” he reflects. As AI evolved, he witnessed its reach: changing industries and enterprises in its wake. 

In 2016, when Naik joined the Bajaj Finserv Group’s corporate strategy function, he reported directly to the Group Head of Strategy, which gave him a front-row seat to how innovation could drive business transformation. “Innovation till then was a very inward-looking thing... what Bajaj taught me was to take an outside-in view,” he says.

At Bajaj, Naik was a key player in shaping the group’s innovation playbook: from building partnerships with startup ecosystems in Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and Singapore, to marrying enterprise challenges with cutting-edge technology.  

AI at Bajaj General

For Naik, artificial intelligence is not a standalone technology, but a transformational force re-forging the entire insurance value chain.

“We look at the entire value chain—from solicitation to underwriting, claims, and policy servicing—and evaluate how AI can enhance each stage,” he explains. The company’s strategy is to move beyond incremental automation and reimagine core processes to unlock full-scale efficiency and impact.

“On its own, AI ends up simply being a technology that may or may not give you the desired benefits. To see real impact, you have to reimagine how your business process will operate through AI,” he says.

This mindset drives Bajaj’s approach, rethinking every workflow, from internal operations to customer and partner-facing touchpoints, including agents, bancassurance partners, and motor dealers.

One of Naik’s biggest challenges is balancing innovation with regulatory compliance. As CIO, he has built a governance framework that embeds compliance, risk, and legal teams early in the project lifecycle. “Earlier, regulation came in post-testing, causing friction. Now, we bring compliance into discussions right from the start,” he explains.

Bajaj is also working on a framework-based approach for AI implementation, allowing standardization of compliance parameters across projects, making future evaluations faster and more consistent.

Two use cases highlight his progress. The first involves computer vision in motor claims, where AI models trained on millions of vehicle images now assess damages with 88% accuracy—dramatically reducing manual surveyor intervention. Implemented over three years ago, this system marked a paradigm shift in claims processing.

The second, powered by generative AI, supports over 100,000 Bajaj agents across 450+ products. The GenAI assistant helps agents recall product features, compare plans, and tailor recommendations based on customer profiles. “Without GenAI, this would’ve been far from reality,” Naik admits.

For Naik, AI is not about replacing human judgment but amplifying it—empowering employees, enhancing customer experiences, and enabling smarter, faster decision-making across the organization.

The challenges

The biggest challenge in driving AI adoption that Naik faced at Bajaj General was acceptance. Convincing teams to believe in the impact of a paradigm-shifting technology, not just incremental efficiency, required vision and early proof points.

“People had doubts initially, but the first successes helped us cross that hurdle,” he says. The next challenge was skills. Many employees hadn’t worked with AI, making reskilling essential. “There is an entire generation that has probably not had the exposure to AI. So how do you reskill them to be able to get them on the AI bandwagon?” he asks. 

The final challenge he faced was in attracting new AI talent to an insurance firm. Bajaj General needed to showcase that AI engineers would have the chance to work on cutting-edge problems. 

Revolutionizing the AI industry

The real shift in AI isn’t just in new ideas; it’s in how far technology can now take existing ones. “Use cases like personalization and fraud detection have always been core to insurance,” says Naik, adding “what’s changed is our ambition and the power of technology to solve them at scale”.

Take fraud detection, for instance. Identifying repeat claimants across states was once time-consuming and limited. Today, with GenAI, Bajaj can analyse court judgments and detect patterns—such as the same claimant or witness appearing in multiple cases—within seconds. “It was possible before, but never this efficient,” Naik notes.

Over the next five years, he believes GenAI will impact every part of the insurance value chain, from policy issuance and invoice processing, to claims and customer service. In operations, it will automate document-heavy tasks and streamline finance workflows. In claims, particularly motor and health, it will accelerate adjudication by analysing medical protocols, pharmacy bills, and fraud indicators with precision. While underwriting could still require human judgment, much of the manual effort can now be supported by intelligent automation.

Naik sees customer service and claims as the biggest beneficiaries. “These are areas where human effort is high, and GenAI can deliver both speed and accuracy,” he explains.

Behind these advancements is Bajaj’s data modernization journey. Two years ago, the company built a unified, cloud-based data platform on AWS to centralize its structured and unstructured data—from motor claim images and invoices to customer voice recordings. This robust foundation now powers every AI use case.

“AI is only as good as the data behind it,” Naik emphasizes. “By investing in our data platform early, we’ve set the stage for smarter, faster, and more scalable AI applications across the enterprise.”

Partnering with AWS

Bajaj General Insurance’s partnership with AWS spans over seven years, making it one of the first large insurers to move its core policy administration system to the AWS cloud. Over time, the company has leveraged AWS tools across its AI journey.

“Our analytics team initially used SageMaker to run AI models, and now our GenAI use cases are built on Bedrock,” Naik says. Bajaj has also deployed Textract to standardize hospital tariffs and speech-to-text models for operational efficiency. “It’s an evolving partnership—every new use case brings an opportunity to explore the latest models on Bedrock,” he adds.

AI and beyond…

For Naik, staying ahead of the AI curve is all about staying connected—to partners, people, and ideas. “Our biggest source of insight is our partners, especially those like AWS, who operate at the cutting edge of AI and innovation,” he says.

Within Bajaj General Insurance, his team also plays a key role. “We have a culture of sharing what’s new. Every week, we discuss what’s emerging and whether it’s relevant to us or worth experimenting with.”

Beyond work, Avinash unwinds with family. “I play tennis and cricket with my 14-year-old son, and spend time with my four-year-old daughter—teaching, playing, learning together,” he shares. When it’s time to relax, it’s all about ‘90s Bollywood music. “That era was special. They don’t make music like that anymore.”