Background
Icatu Seguros is one of Brazil’s largest insurers in life, pension, and capitalization products. Its nationwide distribution relies heavily on independent brokers, who often sell for multiple insurance providers. Historically, these brokers worked through Casa do Corretor, Icatu’s desktop-first platform where they could quote products, submit applications, and manage clients.
While powerful, the platform wasn’t designed for the day-to-day reality of brokers who spend their time in WhatsApp conversations, client meetings, and informal settings where access to a desktop isn’t possible. This created friction at key commercial moments. When a broker needed to generate a quotation or answer a product question during a client conversation, they often had to wait until they were back at a computer. In a highly competitive market, those delays could mean the difference between winning or losing a sale.
To change this, Icatu and ED, its long-time technology partner and Premium Expert Partner of n8n, designed A.V.I., a WhatsApp-based virtual assistant powered by generative AI and orchestrated entirely through n8n workflows. For the first time, brokers could quote, retrieve information, and follow up with clients directly from their phone, in natural language and without interrupting the flow of a conversation. As Product Owner Luiza Vidal Vilardi explained, “AVI was born out of the desire to make the broker’s daily routine increasingly good and dynamic.”
Challenge
Before AVI, quoting a life insurance product required a full desktop workflow. Brokers needed to log into Casa do Corretor, fill long forms with dozens of parameters, and wait several minutes for a result. This was manageable in an office environment but incompatible with real-world sales scenarios. As André Farzat, Head of Development at ED, shared, “It would take a few minutes to get one small quotation for a client.”
This limitation went beyond inconvenience. Brokers frequently needed immediate answers to product rules, coverage limits, commissions, or what to do when a client missed a payment. These questions usually required calling or emailing Icatu’s commercial support team and sometimes waiting hours or half a day for a response.
The combination of slow quoting and slow access to information created a structural barrier for brokers, affecting their responsiveness and, ultimately, their ability to sell. Because brokers choose which insurer to prioritize based on the ease and speed of working with them, Icatu recognized an opportunity to turn this friction into a competitive advantage. To succeed, it needed a solution that could provide instant answers, operate securely at scale, and integrate deeply with its existing systems.
Solution
A.V.I. was created as a mobile-first, AI-enabled assistant that lives where brokers already spend most of their time: WhatsApp. Brokers can simply type, speak, or send a photo of client information, and AVI interprets the request, processes it through Icatu’s internal APIs, and returns accurate information within seconds.
A typical interaction might look like a broker sending: “Female, 29 years old, coverage of one million.” AVI interprets the sentence through generative AI, retrieves the necessary parameters, and calls the quotation API through n8n. In about forty seconds, the broker receives a simulation, a PDF they can forward to the client, and the result is automatically saved to Casa do Corretor. Luiza captured the impact well: “AVI made a quotation for me in the palm of my hand.”
AVI is not limited to text. Audio messages are transcribed automatically, and brokers can send images of handwritten notes or client documents. AVI extracts the information and builds the quotation or answers the question accordingly. This removes the need for brokers to switch devices, retype information, or interrupt negotiations.
Behind the scenes, n8n orchestrates the entire workflow: message interpretation, authentication, fallback handling, API calls, guardrails, and session management. When the project began, n8n’s Agent framework did not yet exist, so ED built a custom architecture using sub-workflows, Redis sessions, and a function-routing mechanism to interpret OpenAI tool calls. Despite this complexity, the team moved at remarkable speed. The core workflows were built in four weeks, and the entire project went from idea to production in just seven weeks.
As André explained, one of n8n’s strengths was how quickly the team could experiment and adjust. “n8n’s real strength was its automation engine, which gave us remarkable flexibility to create new flows and expand functionalities almost in real time. Adding a new capability was as simple as building a subflow and connecting it to Icatu’s internal APIs, turning product evolution into a continuous and highly agile process. n8n also made it easy to integrate legacy systems, orchestrate API calls, and build tools for the AI agent with minimal friction. The result was an intelligent, dynamic, and scalable automation layer—exactly what we needed to deliver a high-performance solution quickly.”
Over time, as n8n introduced Agents, MCP tools, and new AI capabilities, ED began simplifying and refactoring the architecture. “Nowadays, it would be three nodes,” André said. “At the time it was ten.”
Results
The launch of AVI marked a turning point in how brokers interact with Icatu. Quotation time dropped from several minutes to roughly forty seconds, an improvement of around 85 percent. This meant brokers could quote during live conversations without pausing or returning to a desktop. “We jumped from quotations in five minutes to 40 seconds,” André recalled.
Adoption was immediate. AVI now serves more than 1,000 brokers every day, becoming a natural part of their workflow. Brokers consistently report that it makes their work easier and faster, with some even choosing Icatu specifically because AVI makes selling simpler. “We have brokers that chose Icatu from another insurance company because of AVI,” Luiza shared.
AVI has also reduced the operational load on Icatu’s commercial support teams. Many questions that previously required manual intervention are now resolved instantly through the assistant. Brokers get faster, more accurate information, and Icatu’s teams can focus on more complex or high-value conversations.
The project has gained national and international recognition. AVI won second place in the Gartner Eye on Innovation Awards for Insurance 2025, in the Americas category, one of the most prestigious awards in the insurance sector worldwide, which recognizes consolidated initiatives with measurable results in operational efficiency, commercial impact, and improved experience. It also won third place in the Innovation Award from the National Confederation of Insurance Companies - CNSeg in 2024.
“Because n8n accelerated our development, we were able to release the solution before the rest of the market even realized what we were building. A traditional approach would have given competitors time to react, but n8n helped us launch as a true first mover.”
Product Owner, Icatu Seguros
“n8n’s real strength was its automation engine, which gave us remarkable flexibility to create new flows and expand functionalities almost in real time. Adding a new capability was as simple as building a subflow and connecting it to Icatu’s internal APIs, turning product evolution into a continuous and highly agile process. n8n also made it easy to integrate legacy systems, orchestrate API calls, and build tools for the AI agent with minimal friction. The result was an intelligent, dynamic, and scalable automation layer—exactly what we needed to deliver a high-performance solution quickly.”
CEO, ED