KB Life Insurance boosts AI competitiveness as Korea’s first financial institution to fully deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot

KB Life Insurance is part of KB Financial Group, Korea’s largest financial institution. To address the heavy volume of documents typical in insurance operations and modernize its complex business processes, KB Life Insurance deployed Microsoft 365 company-wide in November 2024. After a pilot period of about six months, the company also introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot across the organization on May 29, 2025, marking the full-scale start of its AI-driven change management across the enterprise. 

Pioneering AI-powered business transformation in the financial services industry

KB Life Insurance’s company-wide adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot, supported by KB Financial Group and by its internal commitment to business innovation, marked the first case of its kind among Korean financial institutions. Mun-cheol Jeong, CEO of KB Life Insurance, emphasizes that leveraging AI technology to maximize efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity for sustainable growth in quality.

“KB Life Insurance is pursuing an approach centered on ‘customer focus and ‘quality-driven growth.’ To deliver better services to our customers, we need seamless communication, a flexible work environment, and fast decision making at the foundation of our culture. Only when our internal customers—our employees—work efficiently can external customer satisfaction rise, ultimately leading to quality-driven growth. With the company-wide deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot, KB Life Insurance will create an environment where employee insights and AI support coexist, enabling us to lead in AI adoption and achieve quality-driven growth.” 

A regulatory shift also played a key role in enabling KB Life Insurance’s rapid adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Initially, there were concerns about compliance with network separation regulations, but in August 2024, financial authorities launched the Financial Regulatory Sandbox in response to growing demand for generative AI. This initiative paved the way for Microsoft 365 Copilot to be recognized as an innovative financial service, allowing for network separation exemptions. By establishing robust security and data protection systems in close cooperation with Microsoft, KB Life Insurance successfully obtained approval under this sandbox framework. Jongho Lee, General Manager of Process Innovation at KB Life Insurance, reflects on the implementation process, underscoring the importance of organizational culture and collaboration:

“KB Life Insurance approached the adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot not merely as introducing a new solution, but as transforming our work culture. Over the past year, we faced some practical challenges, but we were able to move the project forward smoothly thanks to the strong commitment to AI-driven innovation from KB Life Insurance’s leadership and KB Financial Group. Proactive technical support and close cooperation from Microsoft also played a key role.” 

Microsoft 365 Copilot training led by Microsoft enables rapid practical adoption

Implementing AI-powered productivity tools and equipping employees to use them effectively are two distinct challenges. To bridge this gap, KB Life Insurance held an internal event on May 29, the day of its company-wide Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption, led by Microsoft solution experts.

The event consisted of two sessions: an informational briefing and a hands-on experience segment, each conducted twice. The briefing covered an overview of Microsoft 365 Copilot, its future roadmap, and live demonstrations, followed by a Microsoft 365 Copilot experience zone.   

The briefing session focused on how Microsoft 365 Copilot enables an AI-collaborative work environment with enterprise-grade security, showcasing use cases such as automatic generation of meeting minutes from Teams recordings, Outlook schedule integration, and report drafting using Markdown prompts. It also highlighted Copilot’s ability to summarize and organize information from emails, documents, and files through queries to enhance workflow continuity and efficiency, while stressing that because Microsoft 365 Copilot cannot access local documents, cloud-based data centralization is essential. The session also introduced Agent features for automating repetitive tasks, including a Facilitator Agent for real-time meeting summaries and an Interpreter Agent for multilingual interpretation support.

The Experience Zone event held after the briefing attracted great interest from participants with various hands-on opportunities. Participants actively engaged in practical prompt exercises, including Copilot Chat, at booths introducing each application of Microsoft 365 Copilot and an Agent booth powered by Copilot Studio. Hyun Ko, Customer Success Manager at Microsoft, who led the sessions, underscored the importance of ongoing change management following the deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot:

“The key to Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption is change management. Training is not just about learning how to use the features, but about helping users recognize the need for change and actively participate in it. Through four pre-training sessions and this grand opening event, we provided programs that let users directly experience and feel the value of change. We witnessed KB Life Insurance employees’ high interest and active participation. These hands-on programs serve as a strong driver for the entire organization to naturally adapt to new ways of working and make practical use of Microsoft 365 Copilot." 

Microsoft AI-powered productivity innovation roadmap

KB Life Insurance employees are already proficient in utilizing the core features of Microsoft 365, experiencing significant efficiencies in internal collaboration and information accessibility. Jaesung Kim, Senior Manager of Process Innovation at KB Life Insurance, explains that document centralization through OneDrive and SharePoint laid the foundation for adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot, adding that the company plans to expand its utilization moving forward:

“KB Life Insurance has proactively adopted Microsoft 365 and is already familiar with using Outlook and Teams. With the addition of Microsoft 365 Copilot, we expect to improve efficiency across various tasks with generative AI, and our goal is to extend its use company-wide to Agent in the future.”

The success of the change management project driven by the Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption was made possible through close collaboration between KB Life Insurance and Microsoft. Kyoung Ho Uhm, Customer Success Manager at Microsoft, describes the partnership as follows:

“KB Life Insurance showed a strong internal commitment to adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot. With Microsoft Unified Support, tailored for enterprise customers, we provided effective technical support from backend to frontline, which greatly contributed to a smooth and efficient adoption. I am confident that the evolution toward Agent will progress seamlessly, supporting KB Life Insurance’s advanced productivity roadmap.”

Meanwhile, Sangmin Song, Senior Manager of Process Innovation at KB Life Insurance, emphasizes the importance of helping employees become comfortable with Microsoft 365 Copilot:

“I think it’s more important for employees to get comfortable with AI first rather than setting overly ambitious goals from the start. The more they use it, the better they will understand AI, which will naturally lead to real changes and innovations in how we work. Of course, there might be some initial hesitation, so giving training opportunities like today’s is also important.”

KB Life Insurance has become a leader in AI transformation (AX) in the conservative business environment of the financial services industry, particularly in the insurance sector. The company plans to continue evolving its AI-powered work environment in close collaboration with Microsoft going forward.