Leveraging AI to make every experience simpler, smarter, and more human

Inside Emma™ Intelligence

When we started building what would become Emma Intelligence, our team kept circling one question: How do we make benefits feel less like doing taxes and more like talking to someone who actually gets it? 

We’d seen it too often—employees stuck on enrollment screens late at night, HR teams buried in repeat questions, service teams juggling multiple systems just to find answers. Everyone frustrated. Nobody winning.

And most “AI” in benefits only makes the problem worse. You’ve seen it: Generic chatbots, black-box algorithms, automation that strips out empathy.  

We wanted the opposite: Intelligence that understands people and helps them make confident decisions. That’s what Emma Intelligence is all about: Benefits that are simpler, faster, and more human.  

Below, we share how we built Emma Intelligence, the philosophy behind our approach, and why it’s transforming how millions of employees experience their benefits every day. 

Enter Emma: The intelligence layer woven into the benefits experience  

Emma isn’t one monolithic AI that runs everything; she’s a framework for applying the right intelligence to the right problem — whether that’s guiding employees through enrollment (Emma EnrollPro™), supporting HR teams with faster insights (Emma AdminPro™), or helping service teams find answers instantly (Emma™ Agent Assistant). 

In other words, Emma isn’t a separate tool sitting on top of the platform. She’s a coordinated layer of intelligence within it.  

Mindful AI^®: The philosophy behind responsible AI innovation  

To understand why Emma stands out, it helps to know the philosophy behind her design. At bswift, we call it Mindful AI — the guiding philosophy that keeps our innovation focused, responsible, and accountable to the people it serves. 

You can explore the full philosophy in our Mindful AI blog, but at a high level, these are the principles that guide us:  

• #1 AI should augment people, not replace them.  

• #2 Privacy is paramount. 

• #3 Every AI decision should be easily explained, and defensible.  

• #4 AI is central to our future—so it must scale and evolve.

In practice, this means Emma doesn’t just run behind the curtain. She operates with accountability, transparency, and flexibility.  

In this respect, Mindful AI serves as an important safeguard. The market is racing ahead on AI adoption, but confidence isn’t keeping pace. A recent Forrester study found that while 65% of HR leaders already use AI, nearly 75% worry about using it the wrong way.  

That disconnect is the real risk: Moving fast without a safety net. Mindful AI helps close that gap, giving clients both the innovation they need and the reassurance they can’t afford to lose. 

How Emma works: Chat, enrollment, admin, and service 

Emma shows up in four main ways across our benefits ecosystem, each designed to solve a specific friction point in the benefits experience. 

Emma Chat  

Not your typical conversational AI. She’s trained on each client’s unique benefits framework, SBCs, and plan structures. If clients choose, she also pulls in claims data to deliver personalized answers—not canned responses from a generic database. Ask about your deductible, and Emma knows your plan, usage history, and family setup. 

She’s available 24/7 because more than a third of benefits questions come in after hours. In 2024, Emma handled 610,000 messages across 142,000 chat sessions, saving people an estimated 59,000 minutes of hold time. 

Emma EnrollPro™  

Built to tackle the biggest challenge: Decision paralysis during open enrollment. Instead of a confusing grid of options, Emma analyzes plan details, personal preferences, and life circumstances to recommend the best fit.  

It works—86% of employees say EnrollPro helped them navigate enrollment, and 40.5% chose Emma’s recommended plan. 

Emma AdminPro™ 

Launching in 2026, Emma AdminPro will give HR leaders something they’ve never had: The ability to ask plain-language questions and get instant dashboards. “Show me HDHP adoption trends” becomes a real-time visualization instead of a three-week data request.  

AdminPro will integrate claims, demographics, and utilization data to surface cost drivers that would otherwise stay hidden. 

Emma™ Agent Assistant  

This version of Emma equips our Service Center team with complete context—employee history, real-time plan data, and sentiment from prior interactions. The result? Resolution times drop, satisfaction scores climb to 96%, and every interaction stays personal, not scripted. 

Smarter AI makes benefits feel more human  

Four years into building on (and scaling) Emma Intelligence, we’ve learned something unexpected: The smarter our AI gets, the more human our platform feels. Not because it imitates people, but because it frees them.  

Intelligent automation lets our teams focus on judgment, empathy, and the reassurance that matters when someone’s making choices about their family’s health. 

When Emma handles data lookups, service teams can help the new parent adding a baby to their plan. When she surfaces cost drivers instantly, HR leaders can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets. When she guides enrollment, employees feel confident, not confused. 

At scale, Emma reveals patterns others miss. But more importantly, she creates space for real human decision-making. 

We’re still working on it. Our tech is still iterating, learning, and evolving. But we’ve solved the hardest part: Building technology that gets out of the way.