The rise of AI has caused fear among insurance agents and distribution personnel, just as the rise of the internet 25 years ago did, but that fear is unfounded, a finance professor specializing in the insurance industry told a Travelers webcast audience.
"Are there some back office jobs that might, in fact, enable agents and agencies to turn those tasks over to some sort of AI? The answer to that is absolutely yes," said Robert Hartwig, director of the Risk and Uncertainty Management Center at the University of South Carolina. "But just like the experience at the advent of the internet and associated technologies, I think everyone agrees today that the internet has actually improved the insurance shopping experience. The average consumer today can get more quotes from more sources more rapidly than at any time in history."
When online portals for insurance shopping first became available in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hartwig said, there were predictions that agents were just a few years away from extinction.
"What we saw then is what we're going to see now, is that the agencies and individual agents are going to wisely adopt AI tools that enhance what they are doing, that allow them not only to become more efficient, but to provide an enhanced customer experience with their clients," he said. "Also tools that are going to be implemented by the carriers themselves in the way that they interface with the independent agents."
Just as the internet created concerns about risks, AI does create its own set of risks, Hartwig said. Similarly, however, AI "creates opportunities for agents and brokers to find solutions along with carriers for those risks that are going to evolve," he said.
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