For the last several years, much of the conversation surrounding artificial intelligence and the insurance industry has centered on one question:

How many jobs will AI replace?

It's an understandable concern.

Artificial intelligence can already answer phones, summarize documents, analyze data, respond to emails, schedule appointments, communicate with clients and automate tasks that once required hours of human work.

But there may be another question the insurance industry should be asking.

What if we don't have enough people to do the work in the first place?

That is the argument raised in a recent InsuranceNewsNet article by Will Johnson, CEO of Gyde. Rather than viewing artificial intelligence primarily as a threat to insurance brokers, Johnson argues that AI may become part of the solution to a growing capacity problem within the industry.

It's an interesting argument because the insurance industry is facing two trends at exactly the same time.

The work is becoming more complicated.

And many of the people doing that work are getting older.

The Insurance Industry Has a People Problem

Insurance has talked about its aging workforce for years.

According to figures cited by InsuranceNewsNet, half of insurance brokers are expected to retire between 2021 and 2036, while only one new agent is entering the profession for every six who leave.

At the same time, millions of baby boomers are aging into Medicare.

That creates an unusual situation.

We may have fewer experienced brokers available at precisely the time consumers need more help navigating increasingly complicated insurance decisions.

And Medicare isn't the only example.

Health insurance brokers are dealing with increasingly complicated plan structures, verification requirements, carrier changes and compliance obligations.

Property and casualty agents are navigating difficult markets, carrier exits, underwriting restrictions and enormous premium increases in certain parts of the country.

Life insurance agents are dealing with increasingly sophisticated products, underwriting technology and consumers who arrive with more information than ever before.

The insurance agent isn't disappearing.

If anything, the job is getting bigger.

The Real Threat May Be Capacity

There is another problem that experienced agents understand particularly well.

Success eventually creates its own workload.

An agent begins with 100 clients.

Then 500.

Then 1,000.

Eventually, the agent isn't spending most of the day finding new clients.

They're servicing the ones they already have.

Renewals.

Policy questions.

Address changes.

Billing problems.

ID cards.

Carrier calls.

Prescription questions.

Provider searches.

Enrollment issues.

Claims questions.

Follow-ups.

Emails.

Voicemails.

Compliance.

The book of business that created the agent's success eventually consumes much of the time that previously created the business.

InsuranceNewsNet describes this as a capacity constraint, and I think that's exactly the right way to look at it.

An experienced broker might still be capable of helping another 500 families.

The problem is that there are only so many hours in a day.

That's where AI becomes much more interesting.

What If AI Doesn't Replace the Agent?

Imagine an insurance agency where AI handles a meaningful portion of the repetitive administrative work.

A client calls asking for an ID card.

AI handles the initial request.

A client wants to know whether the office received a document.

AI checks the system.

An agent finishes an appointment.

AI summarizes the meeting and creates the follow-up tasks.

A prospect submits an inquiry at 10:30 at night.

AI immediately responds, collects basic information and schedules an appointment.

A carrier sends a 40-page product update.

AI identifies the changes that actually matter to the agency.

A Medicare client asks a basic question about a deductible.

AI provides the general explanation while identifying situations that should be escalated to the agent.

None of these examples require removing the broker.

They remove work from the broker.

That's a very different proposition.

The Broker's Time Is the Scarce Resource

For most independent insurance agencies, the most valuable resource isn't leads.

It isn't software.

It isn't even commissions.

It's the time of experienced people.

There are only so many hours an experienced agent can spend talking to clients, solving difficult problems and making recommendations.

Yet agencies routinely use that expensive resource for work that doesn't require decades of insurance experience.

That's inefficient.

AI potentially changes the economics.

If an agent currently spends three hours every day on administrative work and technology reduces that to one hour, the agency hasn't eliminated a job.

It has created two additional hours of productive capacity.

Multiply that across five days.

Then 50 weeks.

Then ten agents.

Suddenly you're talking about thousands of hours that can be redirected toward clients.

That is where the AI conversation becomes much more interesting than simply asking how many employees can be eliminated.

More Efficiency Could Actually Create More Jobs

There is a counterintuitive economic argument behind this.

Making something cheaper or more efficient doesn't always reduce demand for the people providing it.

Sometimes it expands the market.

If technology allows an insurance agency to serve significantly more people without administrative costs increasing at the same rate, the agency can grow into opportunities that previously weren't economically practical.

And there are plenty of those opportunities.

Insurance clients rarely have only one insurance need.

The Medicare client may also need life insurance.

The life insurance client may need an annuity.

The small-business owner may need health benefits, property coverage, liability insurance, key-person insurance and retirement planning.

The family buying homeowners insurance may need auto, umbrella and life coverage.

Historically, many agencies simply haven't had the time to explore every need.

They're too busy servicing what they already sold.

AI could change that.

The Broker Could Become More Comprehensive

One of the more interesting ideas in the InsuranceNewsNet article is that greater efficiency could allow brokers to become broader advisers to their clients.

I think there's something important there.

Insurance has traditionally been divided into silos.

Medicare agent.

Life agent.

ACA agent.

P&C agent.

Employee benefits broker.

Financial advisor.

Consumers don't necessarily think that way.

They think:

I have a problem. Who can help me?

Technology could make it easier for independent agencies to coordinate more of those needs.

That doesn't mean every Medicare agent suddenly becomes a financial planner or every P&C agent starts giving investment advice. Licensing, competence and regulatory boundaries still matter.

But agencies can become better at recognizing needs, making appropriate referrals and coordinating services.

AI can help identify those opportunities.

The human still decides what to do with them.

There Is a Catch

There is, however, an important distinction between using AI and building an AI-enabled agency.

Buying a ChatGPT subscription doesn't transform an insurance agency.

Neither does adding a chatbot to the website.

The real gains will come when AI is incorporated into workflows.

What happens when a lead arrives?

What happens after an appointment?

What happens when a client calls?

What happens during renewal season?

What happens when a carrier changes a product?

What happens when an application gets stuck in underwriting?

Those processes have to be redesigned around what humans should do and what technology can do.

The agencies that simply bolt AI onto broken processes may not gain very much.

The agencies that redesign the processes themselves could gain enormous leverage.

But Don't Automate the Relationship Away

There is another side to this.

Insurance is a relationship business.

That is particularly true when something goes wrong.

Nobody wants to hear:

"Please continue talking to our AI assistant"

when their spouse has died and they're trying to file a life insurance claim.

A Medicare beneficiary dealing with a serious diagnosis may not want a chatbot explaining network rules.

A business owner whose building just burned down probably doesn't want an automated text sequence.

There are moments when efficiency becomes the wrong objective.

Good agencies will need to recognize the difference.

AI should remove friction from the relationship.

It shouldn't remove the relationship itself.

That may become one of the defining differences between good and bad implementations of AI in insurance.

This Connects to the Bigger Question of Trust

This also connects directly to another recent discussion surrounding artificial intelligence and financial advice.

Consumers are increasingly willing to use AI for financial information even though their trust in it remains relatively low.

That tells us consumers value convenience, but they still recognize the importance of human judgment.

Insurance brokers occupy an interesting position between those two things.

AI can provide information almost instantly.

The broker provides context.

AI can identify possibilities.

The broker can ask why they matter.

AI can help compare products.

The broker can understand the person buying them.

AI can work at enormous scale.

The broker can accept responsibility for the relationship.

The winning model probably isn't human versus machine.

It's human plus machine.

The Agents Who Should Be Worried

That doesn't mean every insurance job is protected.

Some tasks will disappear.

Certain administrative positions may shrink.

Call-center functions will change.

Basic customer-service interactions will increasingly be automated.

And agents whose primary value is simply repeating information that a consumer can obtain from an AI assistant may have a difficult time justifying that value.

But that's different from saying the insurance broker disappears.

The broker who understands underwriting, recognizes client needs, navigates difficult situations, builds relationships and exercises good judgment may actually become more productive.

One experienced agent equipped with good technology may eventually be capable of serving a book of business that once required several people.

That changes the economics of the industry.

It also raises the standard for what consumers should expect from their broker.

The Independent Broker May Be Entering a New Era

For years, technology was often presented to insurance agents as something designed to replace pieces of what they did.

Online quoting would replace agents.

Direct-to-consumer insurance would replace agents.

Websites would replace agents.

Automated enrollment would replace agents.

Now AI will supposedly replace agents.

And yet independent brokers are still here.

There is a reason for that.

Insurance isn't simply an information problem.

It's a decision problem.

Consumers need to understand tradeoffs. They need someone to recognize what they haven't considered. They need help when circumstances don't fit neatly into the boxes on an application.

Technology continues to get better at providing information.

That doesn't necessarily make professional judgment less valuable.

It may make it more valuable.

The Bigger Opportunity

The insurance industry shouldn't measure the success of artificial intelligence by asking:

How many people did we eliminate?

That's probably the least imaginative use of the technology.

The better question is:

How many more people can we help?

Can a Medicare broker responsibly serve 2,000 clients instead of 1,000?

Can a small agency answer clients faster?

Can agents spend more time reviewing coverage and less time chasing paperwork?

Can an agency identify coverage gaps that previously went unnoticed?

Can experienced brokers continue serving clients longer without becoming overwhelmed by administrative work?

Can younger agents enter the business with technology that helps them become productive faster?

Those are much more interesting possibilities.

The insurance industry has spent years worrying that technology will eliminate the broker.

We may eventually discover that we had the problem backwards.

As experienced agents retire, insurance becomes more complicated and consumers demand more help, the industry may desperately need to increase the productivity of the brokers who remain.

Artificial intelligence could be one of the tools that makes that possible.

The future insurance agent may not look exactly like the insurance agent of twenty years ago.

They may serve more clients. They may have fewer administrative tasks. They may use AI assistants throughout the day. They may spend less time looking for information and more time interpreting it. And they may increasingly function as the human judgment layer sitting on top of increasingly powerful technology.

That's not the disappearance of the insurance broker.

It may be the beginning of a much more capable one.