Sunlife brings Gemini to its advisors across five Asian markets
Anyone who has sat across the kitchen table from a financial adviser knows the meeting is only half the work. The other half often happens at night. Notes get typed up from memory, follow up emails get drafted, a product sheet gets hunted down in a shared folder and the calendar is juggled around a team meeting and a client who can only talk on Saturday. Clients rarely see that labour, but they feel it when the reply arrives late or reads like a template. For insurers built on agency forces, administrative drag is the quiet tax on every relationship.
What Sunlife is rolling out
The insurer, which now styles itself Sunlife and whose parent Sun Life Financial reported total assets under management of C$1.70 trillion at 30 June 2026, is working with Google to put Google Workspace with Gemini in the hands of its advisors in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Gemini sits inside the tools advisors already open each morning: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and Google Meet. The stated aims are practical. They are prompt, personalised service, help managing teams and support for coaching and sales conversations. Alongside the AI, advisors get resources Sunlife produces itself, including product information, materials to share with clients and content for following up after meetings. This is not a cold start, either. Sunlife first offered Google Workspace to advisors across Asia in 2021, so the new layer lands on habits that already exist.
What advisors asked for
Frankie Leung, Chief Agency Officer, Asia, frames the move as a response rather than a mandate. "This investment responds directly to what our advisors told us they need," he said. "Easier collaboration, quicker access to information and simpler ways to manage everyday work." That ordering matters. Plenty of enterprise AI rollouts begin with a licence deal and then go looking for a problem, whereas this one, at least in its framing, starts with the frustrations of the people doing the work. Leung ties it to a larger ambition. "Our ambition is to develop the industry's most respected advisors. That means giving them the tools, information and support they need to deliver great Client experiences."
Where judgement still lives
Haydn Sallmann, Director, Google Workspace, Asia Pacific, said embedding Gemini in advisors' daily workflows lets them cut administrative overhead and focus on richer, more personal financial guidance. Leung draws the boundary more carefully. "AI can help advisors prepare better, follow up faster and deliver more personalized support, but it does not replace the trust and relationship at the heart of great advice." The company describes AI as a tool to strengthen human relationships, giving advisors more time for judgement, trust and personal connection. That is a sensible position for an advice business, where the product is partly the confidence a client places in one person. It also sets a test the rollout will have to pass. Will reclaimed time actually flow to clients, or will it simply fill up with admin of a different shape?
What this means for L&D
Sunlife has not disclosed training numbers or advisor headcount, so the scale of enablement behind the rollout is not public. That gap is where most of the value or waste in programmes like this sits. Switching on Gemini inside Gmail is easy. Teaching an advisor to prepare for a client review with it, check what it drafts against product rules and keep their own voice in a follow up is harder, and agency leaders need the same support because coaching and team management are named uses. Leaders running similar rollouts should build the learning around the moments advisors already struggle with, such as preparation, follow up and team meetings, rather than around feature tours, which is the approach behind our AI Training programs. They should also decide early how they will know whether saved time reached clients, because that, not adoption, is the measure Sunlife has publicly set for itself.
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