“It’s so easy!” How Bupa made legal and compliance help on-demand with GenAI

Thanks to their self-service tools, the global insurance company now has instant access to hyper-accurate answers on policies, playbooks, and contract guidance—all in just a few clicks.

Led by Head of Legal Operations Claire Nuske, under the award-winning General Counsel Maria Marinelli, Bupa’s legal team is among the first in APAC to develop GenAI tools that increase access to legal and compliance knowledge company-wide.

The new tools join Bupa’s 40+ document and workflow tools that the business has launched since first logging on to Josef back in 2022.

In conversation with Josef Co-founder and CEO Tom Dreyfus Claire discusses the Josef Q tools springing up across Legal, People, Marketing and Workplace Relations. How are they changing the way the business works? What lessons have they picked up while implementing GenAI? Where to next?

Watch the full chat to find out or read our recap below.

Bupa has 40+ automated document and workflow tools—and counting!

Claire explains that Bupa’s tools automate everything from high-volume, high-value agreements like MSAs and NDAs to legal operations itself, such as the wildly popular legal front-door, Sam the Running Elephant.

Claire shares that the company’s NDA tool alone saves Legal 15 hours a month and recently enabled the procurement team to “churn through 24 NDAs in just two days.”

“We’re not stopping anytime soon,” she says. “We get requests to create new tools on a weekly basis!”

Improving access to knowledge with GenAI

Following the success of their document and workflow tools, Claire and her team wanted to see what they could achieve with GenAI.

Their main aim? Ensure everyone in the business has easy access to the knowledge they need on demand.

Claire explains, “We have these really large documents packed with fantastic data inside, but they’re just too dense for the business.”

“If we could make information more accessible with GenAI, employees would be able to do their jobs even better.” Plus, Claire’s team would have the bandwidth to focus on higher-level tasks too!”

Marketing compliance made easy

One of the first chunks of knowledge Bupa automated was the company’s Marketing Playbook.

As Claire explains, “It’s 60+ pages long and contains a lot of helpful information related to all of the questions we’ve ever been asked” about creating compliant marketing campaigns.

After uploading the playbook to Josef Q and training the tool with subject matter experts across Marketing, the tool was launched! Now, it answers questions “for everybody.”

There’s no more repetitive back-and-forth between Marketing and Legal. “No more, ‘Can we do this?’ ‘Can we do that?’ People from multiple of our marketing teams just ask the tool a question… it’s so easy!“

Why Bupa dove into GenAI with Josef Q

Like many in-house teams, they considered building GenAI tools from scratch (you read more about that here), but ultimately chose to create them on a platform that they could buy off the shelf.

Why? Claire explains,

1. Josef Q is easy to use: After weighing up their options, the legal ops team were confident that they could handle “everything themselves.” There’d be no need for IT help, ensuring easy maintenance long-term.
2. “The platform is secure”: As Claire explains, Josef Q has GenAI controls and guardrails that are suited to Bupa’s “conservative approach” to legal GenAI.
3. Teams can upskill quickly: At Bupa, “we want our lawyers to have skills in AI,” Claire says. Josef Q’s no-code design means anyone, no matter their technical ability, can log in and start creating tools straight away.
4. It’s hallucination-free: “The risks are too high” to launch tools on a platform that makes things up, Claire says.
5. It’s trustworthy: “Legal feels safe with Josef Q. We’re inputting a lot of highly confidential information into our tools,” and thanks to the platform’s legal and compliance guardrails, “we’re comfortable using it and the business is too.”

Next up: Tools for HR and People, plus Workplace Relations 

Bupa’s People team is now on a similar mission to Legal: reduce the number of FAQs that HR and People have to wade through each day, and pass them on to self-serve policy tools instead.

HR “is going gangbusters with it,” Claire jokes.

The policy tools are set to be released to all employees across APAC, giving them 24/7 access to the information they need, enabling the team to focus on “more higher-value aspects of the People team function.”

Claire shares that the Workplace Relations team is also busy on Josef Q. They’re digitizing the company’s enterprise bargaining agreement guidance which was previously “very legalistic in writing style.” Soon, it’ll be more accessible to more people, and easy to understand via plain language tools.

Claire’s top tips!

“If you’re looking to get buy-in on a new piece of tech, it can’t just benefit Legal,” Claire says. “Think about how it’ll benefit the wider business. That way, you’re more likely to get more support.”

Relationships matter too. Especially when you’re tasked with implementing widespread change.

Claire notes, “If you can sit someone down and show them how a tool will ease their workload, they’ll be more likely to pitch for you to create it for them. One thing will roll into another, and so on and so forth.”

“It’s about spreading word throughout your business. That way you can really build momentum.”

Learn how Fnatic’s legal and HR teams use Josef Q

In 2023, the esports brand Fnatic created a suite of  “game-changing” self-service GenAI tools to answer questions about contracts, handbooks, and various HR policies.

Their in-house legal team even connected and embedded them into Slack, ensuring the business could get the answers it needs quickly and easily.

Learn more.