Innovations Director Mladen Sančanin on the AI Accelerator and the future of AI within PGGM

Artificial intelligence is evolving at an extraordinary pace and PGGM is evolving with it. AI assistants are already being used across the organisation and according to Mladen Sančanin, Director of Innovation at PGGM, this is only the beginning. ‘AI is no longer just an internal tool; it is rapidly becoming a vital part of our everyday work.’

Creating social impact through new technologies
Together with an enthusiastic team and many colleagues across PGGM, Mladen has spent the past few years on a wide range of innovations. These initiatives not only improve the services PGGM provides to clients, employers and participants, but also make internal processes more efficient. ‘I find great satisfaction in collaborating and creating social impact, often through the use of new technologies,’ he says.

The rise of AI at PGGM
‘AI is nothing new to PGGM,’ Mladen explains. ‘More than 70 per cent of our colleagues have already worked with Microsoft Copilot, 20 per cent use one or more of the over 90 AI assistants developed so far, and around 700 colleagues use the PGGM Intelligent Agent every month. In our customer contact centres, we apply speech-to-text technology to summarise phone calls with generative AI and store them in our CRM systems. Our IT colleagues are already coding with AI support.’

Still, Mladen believes this is only the start. ‘In this first phase, AI mainly acts as a smart assistant; an artificial colleague that makes our work easier and supports us with various tasks. In the next phase, we will truly collaborate with AI tools: systems that can think along, make suggestions and carry out tasks independently. Ultimately, in phase three, AI will evolve into an autonomous force within our organisation. This will not only change the way we work, but also how we interact with clients, participants and employers. Our services will become even smarter, faster and more personal.’

From experimentation to structural implementation
To accelerate the adoption and application of AI across PGGM, the organisation has launched the AI Accelerator: a set of initiatives designed to embed AI more deeply into daily operations. ‘The experimental phase, where we mainly focused on applying AI skills in specific use cases, is now behind us,’ says Mladen. ‘We are now moving towards our main goal: making AI a core competence within PGGM.’

Three pillars as the foundation
The AI Accelerator provides the framework for putting these ambitions into practice, built around three key pillars. The first focuses on transferring existing AI solutions into regular business operations. ‘Working closely with the business units, we have already developed several AI applications that are now in use,’ Mladen explains. ‘This pillar ensures these solutions are properly embedded so the units can manage, further develop and scale them independently.’

The second pillar is about building AI capability within the business units themselves. Each unit is developing its own AI strategy, with the aim of applying AI independently in everyday work, making AI business as usual. The third pillar focuses on emerging technologies and skills. As AI continues to evolve rapidly, the AI Accelerator ensures that PGGM keeps pace. The programme helps identify, adopt and share relevant technologies and skills across the organisation. ‘At the moment, for example, the team is exploring multi-agent technology and developing an ethical framework to ensure AI is used responsibly,’ Mladen adds.

People first
Although the AI Accelerator is fundamentally a technological initiative, Mladen emphasises that it ultimately revolves around people. ‘The key to success is colleagues embracing AI, learning to work with it, experimenting with it and creating value through it. That is the most important thing we want to achieve with the AI Accelerator.’