Why Agency Owners Need AI
AI is everywhere.
But what does AI really mean for independent insurance agents?
Over the past year, we’ve spoken to over 100 people across our industry, including agency owners, producers, account managers, CSRs, operators, and executives, asking that same question. They all say the same thing - piecemeal AI is helpful, but it’s not a game changer, it’s another tool to add to the mess. They say it feels like there is an opportunity for real change but they struggle to define what it really is.
We obsess over this question: How can we utilize this new technology to make a true impact on how an agent works? It’s easier said than done. A recent MIT Research Report got our attention: “Despite $30-$40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return.”
We have canvassed the insurance landscape for all the “AI tools”, as well as LLMs and wrappers offered broadly to the world. While we see amazing things, the solutions today focus on automation of one-off actions (e.g., certificates, call notes, loss run summaries, etc.). Helpful? Yes; but they don’t address the root problem: insurance work happens across systems. We toggle between our AMS, inbox, CRM, carrier portals, PDFs, spreadsheets, voice mails, text messages and more. Every handoff creates delays, errors, and stress. The industry is missing something that connects these fragments into a single flow. This industry is missing a system of intelligence.
What is a system of intelligence? To us, it is simple. A system of intelligence isn’t just another tool — it’s the layer that brings order to complexity. It bridges the gaps between scattered systems, anticipates needs, and learns from every interaction. Instead of adding more clutter, it orchestrates workflows into something coherent, transparent, and adaptive. The result: teams that feel less overwhelmed and more empowered, and customers who experience smoother outcomes.
Here are some examples to put the concept into action:
Helping Service Catch Up. Account managers described their jobs as “always behind”. Certs, renewals, claims, and client requests flood inboxes. Piecemeal AI tools can lighten the load, but they’re just single tiles in the overall mosaic. The real fix is re-prioritizing and summarizing the tasks.
Move From Documentation to Decision. AI already drafts emails and summarizes calls. But the bottleneck isn’t documentation, it’s decision-making. A system of intelligence surfaces not just the what, but the so what; it turns data into context and recommendations.
Increasing Trust and Transparency. The insurance industry is notorious for being a slow adopter. As such, we were consistently asked by agency staff, “Did that actually happen?”. They want to verify what AI suggests, not take it on faith.
Making us Smarter. Today, market intelligence is stuck in silos. Carriers change their appetite constantly and agents struggle to keep up with information coming via emails. Thus, teams share screenshots by email or update folders of appetite guides. An intelligence layer aggregates these signals and gives teams real-time visibility into what markets are open, what carriers are writing.
Adoption is Human, Not Just Technical. In our interviews, it was clear that skeptical staff don’t resist AI because they are afraid of new tech, they resist AI because it threatens routines and feels risky for E&O. The path forward is pairing tech-savvy staff with hesitant veterans, embedding transparency, and tying adoption to real wins.
We believe AI will be a game changer. We believe that it will shift us from toggling tools in a race to catch up, to synthesizing our data and information for streamlined work. We believe that it will empower staff to make better decisions, and unlock better outcomes for customers.
This is what we are building at Agent Vista.
If you share our passion for reshaping insurance with AI (or know someone that does), we’d love to hear from you.
