LIMRA governance group takes on AI challenges for members

When it comes to the challenges presented by artificial intelligence, the insurance industry is trying to navigate a proactive course.

LIMRA and LOMA are leading the way with its AI Governance Group, established in 2024. The group is producing a variety of best practices to help guide the industry through a period of rapid integration of AI.

“The challenge and the opportunity with AI is that things are moving so quickly,” said Kartik Sakthivel, LIMRA and LOMA chief information officer. “Things are moving so quickly that it's unlikely for an entire industry to come together and be proactive as much as we can in the establishment of some level of best practices.”

In February, the group launched its Turnkey Templates & Strategic Guides, resources designed to help companies make informed decisions regarding AI adoption.

AI is revolutionizing the insurance industry by enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience through applications like risk assessment, fraud detection, claims processing, and personalized product offerings. Utilized by insurers for several years, AI technology really took off when ChatGPT emerged, Sakthivel said.

Kelly Coomer is the chief information officer at Sammons Financial Group and is co-chair of the AI Governance Group. AI can help insurance companies across almost all departments, she said, from marketing to legal, just by speeding up the production of documents, as one example.

“That's where we started at Sammons,” she explained. “And it was just, let's prove the productivity. We actually tracked it by different types of jobs. What they were doing with it, what it would have taken them to do the same task without it. And we are able to prove that yes, we can get more productive.”

More specific to the business of insurance, generative AI can help in areas where banks of knowledge are needed, such as call centers, Coomer said. When it gets into underwriting automation, AI is getting better all the time, she added.

According to the AI group survey, 100% of carriers had some level of active engagement and experimentation with generative AI, Sakthivel noted. When it comes to underwriting, “it's absolutely vital for us to try and make sure that we expedite the process of underwriting,” he said.

“Peel back all the technology, the process of underwriting has been unchanged since James Monroe was the sixth President of the United States,” Sakthivel said. “We’re doing the same things over and over again. But I think anything we can do to expedite it and add value and protect more of our fellow citizens, I think that's a [win].”

AI regulation moves

In the absence of comprehensive federal legislation, several states have proactively enacted laws to regulate AI, focusing on areas such as consumer protection, data privacy, and accountability.

Notably, Colorado became the first state to pass comprehensive legislation to regulate AI. The Colorado AI Act, which takes effect on Feb. 1, 2026, requires developers and deployers of AI high-risk systems to use care to protect consumers from any known or reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination or bias.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners are slowly moving forward with their own potential AI regulations. In 2020, the NAIC established foundational principles emphasizing that AI applications should be fair, ethical, accountable, compliant with existing regulations, transparent, and secure.

In December 2023, the NAIC adopted a Model Bulletin on the Use of Artificial Intelligence. Insurers know more AI regulation is sure to come and part of the motivation behind the governance group is to self-regulate as much as possible.

But it's bigger than that, Sakthivel said.

"I see us as taking the first step in the establishment of these guardrails and best practices, not just in anticipation of any regulation or frameworks that would come down the pike," he said. "And they might and they might not. I don't know. No one does. We're doing it because it's the right thing to do."

Next up, the governance group is working on an return-on-investment calculator so insurers can better measure the value of an AI proposition. Further best practices around compliance with regulatory developments are always ongoing. But to a certain extent, AI is evolving so rapidly that the group must remain nimble and able to respond to those challenges, Sakthivel said.

"The exciting part of AI, and also the beguiling part of AI, is just when you have a set roadmap, something comes along that hits you on the side of the head," he said.

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