Insurance has spent the past year experimenting with generative AI in the most obvious corners of the enterprise: summarising emails, extracting details from claims forms, drafting responses for call-centre agents, and speeding up document-heavy back-office work. Those are useful gains. But a new whitepaper by Google Cloud and CoverGo argues that they may also be […] The post SEA’s insurers face a new question: what happens when customers have agents? appeared first on e27.

Over the past year, the question I hear from operators shipping into three or four ASEAN markets has quietly changed. It used to be about the tariff. Now it is about the paperwork. Which certificate does this lane need? Who in our supply chain can prove where this component was made? Why does the same […] The post ASEAN just upgraded its trade rulebook. Most operators will scale on the old one appeared first on e27.

As households across Southeast Asia face rising prices, higher borrowing costs and insecure jobs, analysts say governments should do more to protect a middle class that drives consumer spending but can fall between the cracks of social protection systems designed primarily for poorer households. The issue has come into sharper focus in the Philippines, where the Asian Development Bank Institute urged the government in September to provide targeted support for the middle class to protect its...

Winning new customers is usually treated as one of the clearest signs that a company is growing. More contracts mean more revenue, more logos and more evidence that the market wants what the business is selling. For an early-stage company in particular, saying no to a paying customer can feel almost irrational. Yet revenue can […] The post Not every customer is good for growth appeared first on e27.

For the better part of a decade, Southeast Asia rehearsed its big public-markets moment with a familiar cast: a ride-hailing superapp, a gaming-and-e-commerce giant, a merged Indonesian decacorn. The next star, we assumed, would be another consumer platform that turned the region’s 680 million people into daily active users. Instead, the region’s most anticipated tech […] The post Southeast Asia’s biggest tech IPO of the year is a landlord appeared first on e27.

Singapore’s air pollution worsened to the highest in the world as haze from Indonesia wildfires blankets the region days before the city state’s annual Formula One weekend. Air quality levels in Singapore were in the “very unhealthy” range as of Wednesday afternoon, according to data from IQAir. Nearby Kuala Lumpur, which was earlier in the top spot, ranked as the second-most polluted city globally. In the Malaysian state of Johor, about 140km (87 miles) northwest of Singapore, some 200 schools,...

Despite Malaysia’s insistence that its long-standing non-alignment policy extends to cyberspace, analysts say the country’s reliance on American and Chinese technology could make such a stance difficult to sustain amid the rivalry between the two superpowers. Defence Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin said on Monday that Malaysia would “always remain neutral” in cyberspace, arguing that cyber threats could come from non-state actors and should not be viewed solely through the lens of geopolitical...

Monsoon floods in Thailand have killed 60 people since mid-September, officials said, as surging waters exact an increasing economic toll – destroying homes and crops, killing livestock and flooding factories. Bangkok buckled at the end of September as 300mm (11.8 inches) of rain – around one month’s worth – hit its creaking drainage system over just three days. The floodwaters have largely retreated from the capital, giving city officials crucial breathing space to clear the stinking,...

The recent arrests of 11 suspected terrorists by authorities in Indonesia underline how terrorism remains a persistent security challenge, with analysts warning that militant networks are communicating online through smaller and decentralised cells despite stronger enforcement. The Indonesian National Police’s counterterrorism force, Special Detachment 88 (Densus 88), said on Sunday that 11 suspected terrorists had been arrested in raids across West Java, Central Java, Central Sulawesi, South...

A former Buddhist monk in Thailand was convicted on Wednesday of misusing donations to a highly praised hospice he established for people with HIV/Aids and given the maximum term of 50 years in prison. Alongkot Poonmook, formerly known as Phra Ratcha Wisutthiprachanat, was forced to leave the monkhood after he was arrested last year along with an associate, Seksan Sapsubbsakul, who served as a fundraiser for the project. The Central Criminal Court for Corruption and Misconduct Cases found both...