Introduction
What happens when the lawyer who spent his nights cleaning up coverage disputes decides to build the software himself? Most insurtech is built by engineers learning insurance, and Dan Schuleman came at it the other way. He practiced insurance coverage law, watched a late claim letter turn into a bad-faith fight, and built Qumis so the people reading policies actually understand what the words mean.
Guest Bio
Dan Schuleman is co-founder and CEO of Qumis, the Chicago company building attorney-trained AI that reads and interprets insurance policies for brokers, underwriters, and claims teams. He spent his early career as an insurance coverage attorney at Am Law 200 firms, advising carriers and policyholders on high-stakes commercial claims, then became an early legal hire and Associate General Counsel at Kin Insurance, now a unicorn. Qumis raised an oversubscribed $4.3 million seed in February 2026, after a $2.2 million pre-seed, and its technology is used by five of the fifteen largest U.S. brokers, including NFP and Brown & Brown.
Key Topics
-Claims adjusters are practicing law. An adjuster without a law degree still reads a legal contract every day and forms an opinion on how a court would interpret it, which is the overlap Qumis is built around.
-The coverage letter that went out late. Dan traces Qumis back to a hotel roof claim that turned into a bad-faith dispute because the letter did not go out in time.
-The bench of digital experts. Ask Qumis a question and a lead agent assembles specialist agents that each examine the policy and then synthesize one cited answer, the way a well-resourced firm puts a team on a file.
-A 97% lawyer-agreement rate, with citations. Every output traces back to the source text and the reasoning behind it, so an adjuster can agree or disagree instead of trusting a black box.
-Where AI stops and a lawyer starts. Dan calls coverage interpretation one of the hardest things to automate, and he does not see humans leaving the process any time soon.
-Insurance's spreadsheet moment. He compares the shift to accountants and Excel, where the tabulating goes away and the judgment and creative work expand.
-Commodifying routine coverage counsel. Routine coverage questions that get outsourced to outside counsel are the part Dan expects AI to absorb first, changing when and how firms engage lawyers.
Notable Quotes
"AI isn't going to replace humans, but humans using AI will."
"The product is a promise, and then the promise is expressed in a whole bunch of legalese."
"I saw it play out in the claims context, where a comma could mean a million bucks."
"I have 500 pages of PDF on my desk, and I need to spend the next eight hours figuring out what the issues are and getting the letter out. We can turn that down into half an hour, with likely a more accurate output."
Resources
Guest:
Qumis: https://www.qumis.ai
Dan Schuleman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielschuleman/
Host & Organization:
Joshua R. Hollander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarhollander/
Horton International (USA): https://www.horton-usa.com/
Insurtech Leadership Podcast (LinkedIn Showcase): https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/insurtech-leadership-show
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