AI Copilots Give Commercial Insurance a Long-Overdue Makeover

The commercial insurance industry, an economic linchpin valued in the hundreds of billions, has long been bogged down by antiquated, paper-based processes.

While that should come as no surprise to anyone who has interacted with it recently, it’s not necessarily a conscious choice. The insurance sector is innately and uniquely hindered by legacy systems, regulatory complexities, as well as the sheer scale of underwriting and claims processes.

For commercial insurance to most effectively take its digital transformation medicine, it will need “a painkiller, not just a vitamin. Something that solves acute pain points from day one,” Vishal Sankhla, co-founder and CEO of Outmarket AI, told PYMNTS Karen Webster.

But the inefficiencies plaguing commercial insurance are not new. So why is the industry suddenly waking up to the need for change?

According to Sankhla, whose company just raised $4.7 million to enhance connectivity between brokers, wholesalers and carriers, the answer is twofold: an ongoing drive for efficiency, and the availability of advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

“We’re not just digitizing insurance,” Sankhla said. “We’re redefining it.”

Sankhla’s company isn’t just leveraging existing AI models — it’s building an insurance-specific one from the ground up. 

“We’ve spent the last year working closely with brokers, MGAs [managing general agents] and wholesalers to develop a solution tailored for insurance,” he said. “Generic AI models won’t go deep into the workflows or integrate with legacy systems.”

One of the most significant impacts of AI in commercial insurance is its potential for greater standardization and orchestration across system-level silos.

“If you ask a data analyst to pull a metric like last month’s premium, you’ll get different answers because they’re looking at different systems,” Sankhla explained. “We provide a unified data layer where definitions are standardized, ensuring consistency across the company.”

Since launching in November, Outmarket has onboarded 10 pilot customers, a testament to the industry’s hunger for innovation. The company’s focus? Insurance brokers, a critical yet technologically underserved segment of the value chain.

Sankhla, who previously led product development at Ethos Life, witnessed firsthand the inefficiencies plaguing insurance brokers. From an avalanche of emails and phone calls to processing 200-page policy documents manually, brokers are overwhelmed with friction-heavy workflows.

Worse still, brokers sit on troves of data that remain siloed across disparate agency management systems, claims platforms, and CRMs, preventing them from unlocking insights that could enhance their business performance.

“Brokers are absolutely critical to this value chain,” Sankhla explained. “They provide important advisory services on what insurances businesses need. Businesses don’t just need one insurance — they need multiple coverages. And all of their workflows are extremely manual.”

Read more: Digital Overhaul in Insurance Benefits Firms Already Confident Using AI

AI also allows brokers to optimize key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the submission-to-bind ratio — the time taken from application submission to policy binding. 

“If one carrier takes too long, brokers can explore faster alternatives. AI can also pre-fill renewal applications using last year’s data, eliminating unnecessary back and forth,” Sankhla said.

Previously, insurance firms had to stitch together multiple point solutions — data warehouses, analytics platforms, and workflow automation tools — to achieve partial efficiency. AI can now helps firms to consolidate these functions, offering a seamless, automated experience.

“We don’t ask brokers to change their workflows or their systems of record,” Sankhla said. “That’s not practical. Instead, we connect existing systems, making it easier for brokers to do what they already do, but faster and better.”

Still, as AI adoption accelerates, what happens when every player in the ecosystem has access to the same technology?

For Sankhla, he sees the competitive advantage shifting toward how well companies integrate AI into their operations.

“Every industry today is looking for efficiency. How do I grow my top line? How do I control my costs?” Sankhla explained. “The second big thing is that the technology is there now. AI wasn’t where it is today. Now, you can meaningfully automate, creating a co-pilot-like experience for brokers.”

Looking ahead, while Sankhla’s immediate focus is on brokers, the implications of Outmarket’s AI-driven platform extend across the insurance ecosystem. 

“A more efficient broker system means more accurate, complete applications for underwriters,” he added. “Carriers get better data, which means they can process applications faster and offer better coverage options to businesses.”

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