Credit Union Australia (CUA) has teamed with Sydney-based artificial intelligence and machine learning developer Flamingo AI to deploy a new chatbot service.

Named ‘ROSIE’, the “cognitive virtual sales assistant” will service CUA’s Health insurance customers, providing assistance to users “from the quote stage, through to point of sale,” the company said.

CUA Health chief executive Philip Fraser said the new virtual chat service would meet customers’ increasing preference for transacting through digital sales channels.

“’ROSIE’ has the ability to cater directly to this growing market while also supplementing our personalised interactions with members, managing many of the most common health insurance inquiries,” Fraser said.

Fraser insists the service is “not a replacement for [CUA’s] human services team”, but rather an opportunity to “lift the number of quote requests” the company can service.

After an introductory period of “learning” commonly asked questions and answers, Rosie will be deployed on the CUA Health web channel for a three-month pilot, expected to kick off in the next few months.