Lisa Hilton has spent the past few years putting AI into a Zurich-owned travel insurer's customer service and engineering teams. Now she's taking that experience to a $100 billion-plus superannuation platform.
Hilton has started as general manager, technology - wrap, at MLC Expand, the wrap platform owned by Insignia Financial. Based in Sydney, she will run the Wrap Technology team and decide what gets built on the platform, and when.
Hilton joined Cover-More Insurance - the Sydney-headquartered travel insurer that Zurich Insurance Group has owned since 2017 - as group chief technology officer, later moving into the chief information officer role she held on her way out. There, she oversaw delivery and engineering, including a push to put AI agents into customer service and to use the technology inside engineering teams to build software faster.
Before Cover-More, Hilton held technology leadership roles at QBE Insurance, Macquarie Group and Origin Energy, giving her more than two decades across financial services, insurance and energy.
MLC Expand chief executive Liz McCarthy said Hilton's track record was what made her the right fit.
"I'm delighted to welcome Lisa to the team. Her track record in leading complex technology transformation, and in putting AI to work on real business problems makes her the right person to guide the next generation of our proprietary MLC Expand platform," McCarthy said in a statement.
MLC Expand services more than 350,000 customers and holds over $100 billion in funds under management and administration. Hilton's brief includes extending the platform's AI and automation capability, and shortening the time between adviser feedback and a change appearing on the platform.
Those are problems insurers have been working through for years: AI agents fielding routine service queries, faster document turnaround, automation built into back-office processes. MLC Expand appears to be betting that someone who has already tackled versions of these problems at an insurer can apply the same thinking to advice technology, even though the specific systems she used at Cover-More belong to Cover-More, not to her.
MLC Expand has already made a start on this front. The platform rolled out AI tools to advice firms last year, with Shadforth Advice Group among the first to take up automated document generation drawing on client service agreements and statements of advice.
McCarthy framed the appointment as part of a wider ambition for MLC Expand to become the fastest-growing super and retirement platform by 2030. Hilton's arrival follows Irene Worrell's appointment as head of wrap product management in January, adding to a leadership team McCarthy says is being built around advisers' needs.
"I'm excited to be joining MLC Expand at such a pivotal time. AI is changing what a platform can do for advisers,” Hilton said.
Hilton's move says something about where insurance sits in the broader AI conversation. Insurers such as QBE have spent years building AI into underwriting and claims, while providers like Cover-More have focused their efforts on customer-facing service. That work has produced a cohort of executives with hands-on experience running AI projects in a regulated, customer-heavy environment - exactly the kind of experience that sectors like wealth and superannuation are now short of as they try to catch up.
Whether MLC Expand's bet pays off will depend on how well Hilton's experience translates from travel claims to advice platforms. But the hire itself is a reminder that the AI groundwork insurers have been laying for years has value well beyond their own balance sheets.
