Oliver Wyman develops Marsh McLennan generative AI assistant

Marsh McLennan has tapped the expertise of its management consulting business Oliver Wyman to develop and launch a new in-house Generative AI assistant for its 85,000 worldwide professionals.

Oliver Wyman has entered the private Generative AI picture with the launch of a new in-house tool available to its parent Marsh McLennan’s worldwide workforce of 85,000-plus professionals.

Built on Microsoft and OpenAI technologies and dubbed ‘LenAI’, the new tool is aimed at enhancing productivity, with its early adopters at Oliver Wyman reporting a saving of eight hours on average per week.

“We have some of the brightest minds working across our four businesses and a collaborative culture,” commented Marsh McLennan’s global chief information officer Paul Beswick. “When it came time to introduce the tool, we were able to deploy it quickly and securely. Since its full launch recently, LenAI has been a game changer for our teams, enabling them to work smarter for the benefit of our clients.

Developed by Marsh McLennan’s Innovation Centre in Dublin in collaboration with Oliver Wyman Digital and Microsoft, the project team took into account a range of data privacy, information security, and regulatory compliance and risk management requirements in designing LenAI, along with the needs of sister companies Mercer, Marsh and Guy Carpenter – which together combine as a $20 billion global business.

The quartet of companies under the Marsh McLennan banner have already been serving clients within their respective spheres on the challenges of AI adoption, for example Mercer as to navigating the impact of GenAI on the workforce and Marsh in respect to identifying and mitigating the technology’s risks. Oliver Wyman however has been in the thick of the action, having supported a wide range of cross-industry applications.

“We know AI has the potential to help our clients increase their productivity, transform complex and expensive processes, and do other things that were out of practical reach until now,” stated Oliver Wyman partner Vivek Sen, head of digital for the Americas. “We’ve always been at the forefront of helping our clients leverage the latest technologies even within highly regulated industries, and AI is no different.”

The Marsh McLennan entities are now set to reap the benefits of GenAI for their own. According to the firm, LenAI’s capability add-ons, such as the option to access information from high quality publications and perform more accurate calculations, has led to immediate productivity gains, reducing time spent on simple and repetitive tasks by as much as one fifth. This in turn allows staff to create greater impact for clients.

The release of LenAI follows the launch of similar in-house tools among a number of Oliver Wyman’s consulting competitors – including ‘Lilli’ at McKinsey, and KPMG’s KymChat – but also demonstrates the efforts toward greater alignment among Marsh McLennan companies since the appointment of John Doyle as CEO at the start of the year.

Meanwhile, Oliver Wyman’s creative consulting wing Lippincott is this month celebrating its 80th anniversary.