Univé Builds AI-Ready Workforce with ChatGPT Enterprise

As one of the Netherlands’ largest cooperative insurers, Univé serves millions of members across insurance, mortgages, financial services, and risk prevention. The organization’s mission has always been to help people prevent problems before they happen—and as artificial intelligence (AI) began reshaping knowledge work, Univé saw an opportunity to rethink how employees could better deliver on that mission.

Rather than approaching AI as another technology deployment, Univé viewed it as a major organizational transformation. The objective wasn’t simply to introduce new tools, but to build AI capability across the workforce so every employee could use AI safely, responsibly, and effectively. OpenAI became a key part of that strategy, with ChatGPT Enterprise providing a secure platform that employees could adopt quickly within Univé’s governance framework.

Univé’s transformation began with leadership. Instead of treating AI as an IT initiative, the company brought its entire management community together for dedicated AI leadership sessions. Rather than focusing on product demonstrations, these sessions challenged leaders to rethink how work itself would change and what role they would play in enabling that transformation. Managers moved beyond approving AI initiatives to creating the conditions for responsible innovation across their teams.

“Most organisations try to scale AI by building more solutions,” Univé’s leadership noted. “We chose to scale AI by creating more builders.” This approach marked a significant shift from traditional IT implementations, where organizations often focus on introducing new tools without considering how they will be used or the skills required to use them effectively.

Univé also recognized that adoption at scale would only happen if employees trusted the platform they were using. Governance wasn’t something added after deployment—it was designed into the rollout from day one. Enterprise authentication, connector permission inheritance, privacy assessments, governance processes, security reviews, responsible AI principles, continuous monitoring, and clear human accountability created the confidence employees needed to experiment responsibly.

Permissions always follow the underlying enterprise systems, to prevent AI from getting access beyond what employees are already authorized to see. By establishing strong guardrails early, Univé was able to encourage experimentation with explicit safeguards for security, privacy, and accountability. Governance became an accelerator for innovation, not a barrier to it.

With leadership providing direction and governance providing confidence, employees became the driving force behind adoption. Rather than requiring detailed business cases for every new idea, Univé gave employees permission, structure, and dedicated time to rethink their own work. Across the organization, employees collectively spend hundreds of hours every week redesigning work with ChatGPT Enterprise, building custom GPTs, experimenting with Workspace Agents, and sharing successful approaches with colleagues.

Today, ChatGPT Enterprise supports knowledge work across virtually every business function—from claims and underwriting to finance, HR, legal, IT, customer service, and management. Approximately 1,500 custom GPTs have been created to solve internal challenges, reflecting a culture where employees increasingly improve the organization themselves instead of waiting for centralized development projects.

“Our competitive advantage is not that we use AI,” Univé’s leadership noted. “It is that thousands of employees are learning how to reinvent their own work every single week.” One of the clearest examples of AI in action is pet insurance claims, where a Workspace Agent can assemble the claim file, review veterinary invoices, check policy conditions, identify missing information, highlight anomalies, and prepare a traceable recommendation before the claims handler begins their assessment.

Work that previously took hours to prepare can now be ready for decision in minutes. Rather than spending time gathering, reading, and structuring evidence, claims professionals begin with a well-prepared case and can focus on applying their expertise. Importantly, the trained claims professional remains fully accountable for every final decision. AI prepares the work; people make the decision.

Underwriting is another high-value application where Workspace Agents review incoming work queues, combine information from approved enterprise sources, identify missing documentation, flag risk indicators, and highlight cases requiring priority attention. When underwriters log in, their work queue is already structured, with each case including relevant context, evidence behind recommendations, and specific areas where professional judgment is needed.

Instead of spending valuable time searching for information and assembling files, underwriters can focus on making better, faster decisions. While today’s use cases focus primarily on supporting employees during individual tasks, Univé is actively exploring the next phase of enterprise AI through Workspace Agents—agentic workflows designed to proactively prepare recurring work across approved enterprise systems.

These agentic workflows bring together information, surface relevant context, and create evidence-based starting points before employees begin their day. As these capabilities evolve, every new application continues to be evaluated within the company’s governance framework to ensure security, accountability, and responsible AI remain central to adoption.

Univé believes that today’s prompting will evolve into agentic workflows where AI proactively prepares recurring work, collaborates across approved enterprise systems, and continuously supports employees throughout the day. The organization’s ambition is not simply broader AI adoption but a new operating model in which AI becomes an integral part of how work gets done.

By enabling employees to use and build with AI responsibly, Univé aims to strengthen the quality and accessibility of its services, create more value for its members, improve prevention, and give professionals more space to apply their expertise where human judgment and personal attention matter most. Any competitive advantage will follow from delivering on that cooperative purpose.

“AI will not replace your employees,” Univé’s leadership noted. “But employees who learn to build with AI will redefine what your organisation is capable of.”