Introduction
Insurers have spent two years funding AI pilots, and their boards are now asking what those pilots delivered. Why can so few carriers give a clear answer?
Jim Quick leads the insurance advisory sector for PwC in the US, and PwC is four years into studying which companies get real value from AI. His finding is that carriers taking an incremental approach are seeing the least of it. The carriers getting the most picked their hardest problems, such as new business and underwriting or how fast claimants get paid, and rebuilt the whole process.
Guest Bio
Jim Quick is the Insurance Advisory Sector Leader at PwC US, where he oversees the firm's consulting platforms for insurers, including deals, AI, engineering, strategy, customer, and risk and regulatory work. He has spent about 25 years consulting to the insurance industry across personal and commercial P&C, life and annuities, and group benefits, and most of his direct client work today is in life and group benefits. PwC has more than 5,000 insurance-focused professionals in the US and more than 14,000 globally.
Key Topics
-Going big beats going incremental - Across PwC's AI performance study, the companies getting the most value attack their hardest problems, which Jim calls a culture and leadership challenge more than a technology one.
-A practical sequence - Get hands-on with the tools, spend a couple of weeks rethinking the work, go after the toughest problem with leadership backing, and move to the next hardest problem if the first one doesn't work.
-Growth over efficiency - Most of the market started with cost savings, while PwC's most innovative insurance clients are aiming AI at growth, including bundling products and answering quote requests faster.
-Tokenomics - Some companies have watched AI savings get eaten by token and data center spend, and the real cost of deployment has become a C-suite question.
-Agents on the org chart - Carriers are working out how to account for and manage AI agents, and whether AI engineering should sit in a central office or inside each business unit.
-Build is back, and hardening is the scarce skill - Jim expects far more custom development on the hyperscalers and frontier models, and says the hard part is getting a pilot into production with token usage contained and an audit trail in place.
-Finish the core - Carriers still need a modern, auditable policy, billing and claims core, so Jim's advice to anyone mid-implementation is to finish it and use AI to deliver it faster.
Notable Quotes
"It's really not a technology problem at its core. It is a cultural, it's a leadership, and it's the willingness to really reimagine and be willing to take risks."
"I like to say we're kind of making underwriting fun again, or making underwriting underwriting again."
"It's pretty easy to build things in a pilot environment. What's much harder is to actually get it into production, contain the token usage and harden the solution so that it's auditable."
"If you haven't done it, I think you should. And if you're in it, finish it."
Resources
Guest:
PwC US Insurance: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/financial-services/insurance.html
PwC, "Reinventing insurance: An industry beyond the tipping point": https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/financial-services/library/reinventing-insurance.html
Jim Quick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiquick/
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
Subscribe & Review
If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. The Insurtech Leadership Podcast is available on YouTube, Podbean, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
