How the Insurance Industry Can Drive Growth in the Age of AI

Zywave’s Jeff Cohen sat down with NFP’s President of Commercial Risk Tom Gillingham for a fireside chat to talk about growth, talent, and how the insurance industry can best harness AI.   

Tom Gillingham, President of Commercial Risk at NFP and incoming CEO of Totalis Specialty Group, recently delivered the keynote at the 2026 Zywave Horizon:  Digital Distribution Conference in New York City. A staunch advocate of narrowing one’s focus in order to own a niche and expand premium potential, Gillingham shared his views with the audience on how the industry can achieve new growth by delivering solutions for challenging or underserved areas.

In this exclusive Q&A, Jeff Cohen, Senior Vice President of Industry Relations for Zywave, follows up with Gillingham to get his fresh take on several ideas stemming from his keynote last month.    

JMC: In your keynote, you said that some of the audience is “overreacting to noise dressed up as disruption,” adding that while the pace of change is real due to AI and other factors, it is not happening everywhere all at once.  In your view, what is the most significant way that AI is disrupting the insurance industry status quo?

Gillingham: AI’s disruption has centered on automating slow, manual processes such as submission creation, intake and triage. This work certainly matters, creates efficiencies and frees people to engage in client-facing, value-adding work. But the biggest disruption has yet to happen. This will come in the form of underwriting, such as using AI to improve risk selection and pricing judgement in ways that improve loss ratios, while meeting the governance expectations of the NAIC Model Bulletin on AI and the growing regulatory scrutiny from state DOIs.

JMC: You told the audience that a middle market generalist agency’s growth story of “we’re broad and we’re local” is no longer sufficient to drive revenue. Instead, agencies need to become more specialized. What do you mean by “more specialized,” and how will that approach enable agencies to drive more growth today?

Gillingham: Risk keeps evolving, and client needs are growing more complex. The firms with the strongest organic growth metrics are meeting those needs through specialization, e.g., deep industry or product expertise that delivers outsized value to clients. Both in retail brokerage and underwriting, specialists become trusted advisors whom generalists struggle to displace. Specialization also fuels growth by freeing producers to open new or more complex relationships in industries where they lack personal experience, because they can rely on the firm’s niche experts to design, place and service the right programs.

JMC: While AI adoption is “basically” universal in the insurance industry, you mentioned that adoption alone is not a winning strategy. How should agencies be using AI to drive more growth?

Gillingham: The key to driving real growth from AI is expanding producer capacity and shortening speed-to-market. Producers are the growth engine of every successful agency, and AI is already extending their reach in qualified prospecting, cross-selling and lead capture. This matters even more in a soft market, where growth depends on execution rather than rate.

JMC: You mentioned that the real existential risk in our market is talent, and that the industry is underpricing it. What should the industry do to attract more young people into the industry?  

Gillingham: Two data points about how early-career workers see our industry are alarming.  First, insurance ranks below mining and manufacturing in attractiveness to early-career talent, and most Gen Z workers describe it as “corporate” and “boring.”  Second, we have done a poor job presenting our industry to prospective candidates, and AI offers a real opportunity to change this. Firms should rethink and redesign entry-level roles around AI from day one, so that a new hire’s first year on the job looks like exposure analysis or client interaction rather than data entry, which AI is already solving.

JMC: During your remarks, you pointed out that digital distribution has moved the point of first contact, not eliminated the advisor, and the firms losing ground haven’t noticed the difference yet. In your view, what are the most significant ways that digital distribution changes the nature of relationships with policyholders, and what investments should advisors be making now to grow their business while improving relationships with existing clients?    

Gillingham: One of the most significant ways digital distribution is changing client relationships is through embedded insurance solutions, i.e., insurance sold at the point of another transaction rather than its own destination. Firms have two responses. The first is to build or partner into the point-of-sale moment and try to own the platform relationship instead of the transaction. The second is to reach clients at their moment of need before the platform does, using AI to spot triggers that manual prospecting misses, such as a new contract, location or hire. Either way, this is where AI can play a key role for firms that treat distribution as a technology problem, not a headcount problem.