A French insurance broker hands routine calls to AI voice agents

October 2025 — A French insurance broker that already lets AI agents answer customer calls is now testing agents that can act on a policy without a human. Here's what launched, what it cost, and what went wrong.

Cost and outcome (as of Oct. 8, 2025)

Calls: over 100,000 handled with the AI agents in "just under a year," SoundHound says. (SoundHound)
Staff workload: inbound queries handled directly by the customer relations team down "nearly 20%." (SoundHound)
Status: Amelia 7 pilot "already underway." (SoundHound)
Cost: not disclosed.

What launched

Apivia Courtage launched its partnership with Amelia in January 2023, according to SoundHound. The broker chose the Amelia AI platform, which SoundHound has since acquired, for "its maturity in the enterprise space," the release says.

Through 2024, the AI agents fielded thousands of calls about medical expense reimbursements and insurance guarantee levels. SoundHound said that freed Apivia's human teams to spend more time with brokers and clients.

Apivia Courtage is part of AEMA Group, which SoundHound describes as one of the world's largest mutual and cooperative insurers. The group has 11 million policyholders, members and customers, over 20,000 employees, and €15.6 billion in combined revenue, and works with over 1,600 agencies and more than 3,900 brokers in France, the 2024 release says.

The first-year numbers

On Nov. 21, 2024, SoundHound said the AI agents had helped Apivia handle over 100,000 customer calls in just under a year. It said they had also cut the number of inbound queries handled directly by Apivia's customer relations team by nearly 20%.

"There's a consensus between our managers and teams that introducing SoundHound's Amelia AI agents has improved the quality of their work, giving these employees precious time back to focus on the kinds of tasks that can't be automated," said Emmanuelle Nguyen, Apivia Courtage's CEO. She added that there had been "a perceptible improvement in workplace atmosphere."

Michael Anderson, SoundHound's EVP of enterprise, said the agents now manage "routine customer questions."

The next step: agents that act

On Oct. 8, 2025, SoundHound said Apivia had begun piloting Amelia 7, which it calls an agentic platform powered by large language models. The release lists what the agents will do:

verify a customer's identity with a one-time password
answer questions about a contract
update an address or phone number
calculate the financial impact of a contract change
send a quote or book a meeting with a human adviser

SoundHound said customers would be able to "self-serve" without escalating to a human, with human escalation still available when needed. Apivia evaluated the system "using strict benchmarks" and concluded it was ready to face customers, the release says. The broker planned to demo the pilot at the Reavie insurance event in Cannes on Oct. 8–10.

"Thanks to Amelia 7 Agentic AI, we are deploying a multi-service platform to ensure our clients have seamless and innovative experiences," Nguyen said.

SoundHound says the platform mixes the reasoning of large language models with "more traditional deterministic flows," and that its agents work across chat, text and voice. "This deployment of Amelia 7 will put Apivia Courtage at the leading edge of AI for customer service," said Gérald Audenis, SoundHound's head of operations for Europe.

What went wrong

A number that changed shape. The 2024 release body says queries handled by staff fell nearly 20%. Its headline calls that a productivity increase, and the 2025 release rounds it to 20%.
No customer view. Neither release gives customer satisfaction, resolution or error rates.
What we don't know yet: the pilot's size, what the benchmarks measured, and the cost.

Our follow-up question for Apivia Courtage

How was the "20% productivity increase" measured, and what share of pilot calls do the new agents finish without a human?

Sources

SoundHound AI, “SoundHound's Conversational AI Agents Drive Nearly 20% Productivity Increase at Apivia Courtage Contact Centers,” Nov. 21, 2024. soundhound.com
SoundHound AI, “Apivia Courtage Brings Agentic AI to its Contact Centers With SoundHound's Amelia 7 Platform,” Oct. 8, 2025. soundhound.com
Archimedes Tech SPAC Partners Co. (now SoundHound AI), Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1, Nov. 16, 2021. sec.gov
SoundHound AI, Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1 (Q1 2025 results), May 8, 2025. sec.gov
SoundHound AI, proxy statement (DEF 14A), Apr. 9, 2026. sec.gov

Disclosure: [not in copy] Editor placeholder