Spending in automation and artificial intelligence to enable efficiencies and help expenses.

IAG increased its operating expenses by 4.4 percent to $1.3 billion over the past six months, thanks in part to continued investment in its enterprise platform.

The company said the increase was partly due to increased spending on technology and systems on IAG’s enterprise platform, as part of an ongoing investment program to transform its ability to better support customers and drive operational excellence.

IAG said technology spend in automation and artificial intelligence would enable efficiencies and help expenses.

The insurance group’s enterprise platform was unveiled to the market in December last year in a business update.

The platform acts as a single central insurance platform that supports its digital growth to enable over 80% of interactions across its digital channels.

IAG CEO and managing director Nick Hawkins told investors “operational simplification is a major focus for the management team of IAG”.

“We’re making some great progress with a whole of company program of work that we’re calling our enterprise platform,” Hawkins said.

“What that does is it brings together all the work that we’re doing across claims policy, pricing, digital, mobile an really creating the capability to power our business in a way that is agile, accurate, simple and consistent right across the organisation.”

Hawkins added the company’s “primary focus today” is on “our most critical experience for customers around the claims journey”.

“We’re pleased that we now have almost all new claims across the entire company hosted on a single market leading, modern technology platform”.

During major events Hawkins said IAG is now seeing up to 65 percent of claims lodged via digital channels.

Hawkins added the company can now use AI to effectively predict if a motor vehicle is a total loss after a car accident, “so customers can settle their own claim in just a few hours”.

“Already more than 15,000 customers have self-settled their total loss claims online and there’s more of that to come.

“The enterprise platform will make it easier for our customers, brokers and partners to do business with us and will deliver significant operational efficiencies and savings to IAG,” Hawkins added.

IAG reported a net profit after tax of $173 million and cash earnings of $176 million.