Sam Hanmer: The next big thing for insurance isn’t what you’d expect (Viewpoint)
By Sam Hanmer | Rush Insurance Group Inc.
Editor’s note: As part of our annual Outlook business supplement, The Republican asked Pioneer Valley businesspeople and officials what they believe will be “the next big thing” in their sector. Other responses are available at masslive.com/opinion.
Be it personal or commercial insurance lines, everybody has their eye on the AI ball in 2026. The publicly owned providers are already aggressively pushing premium increases to create shareholder value, but artificial intelligence’s true potential is to reduce costs across the board, and that will be one of the primary uses in the coming year.
For consumers and business owners, that means no real cost relief in the foreseeable future, but also that the digitalization of claims processing, including “straight through processing,” promises greater speed as manual intervention is eliminated. That also means call centers will be reduced, and working with AI agents or automated attendants will be normalized for many insurance transactions at the carrier level. For many, the 24/7 availability of AI agents, such as chatbots, means added convenience for routine tasks like billing and getting basic questions answered.
AI will hyper-personalize insurance for both commercial and personal lines. Telematics pricing will track how personal lines’ customers actually behave, and businesses that invest in cybersecurity monitoring might see lower premiums.
Other tools, such as smart-home technologies, will help consumers avoid problems associated with leaks or frozen pipes. Drivers already are reducing their costs with safe-driving monitors, and our business customers are frequently using AI tools to manage the risks that drive premium increases.
The real change is when it comes to a claim. Younger users are generally more open to AI tools, but for the rest of us, close to 75% of consumers, they would prefer a human over AI to help them with their claim. User behavior for self-managing claims just isn’t there yet, and insurers risk losing business by pushing AI tools too hard in this area. During the stress of a claim, consumers, whether in business or personal lines, prefer an empathetic human to a convenient AI agent.
