1st ‘AI insurance broker’ targets coverage gaps, aiding agents

A specialty wholesale insurance brokerage is on a mission to “digitize human knowledge” in a way that can help bridge service and coverage gaps through its industry-first “AI insurance broker.”

“The vast majority of technology innovation in the past in specialty insurance has been mostly on faster distribution. Never in our existence could we digitize human knowledge and use that in a scalable way across the organization. Well, with LLMs, we can, and that’s why we make so many investments in this space,” Sivan Iram, founder and CEO, Flow Specialty, told InsuranceNewsNet.

Flow started by taking a highly functional core AI model powered by GPT’s OpenAI 4.0 Omni. A team of experts then spent over two years teaching it the ins and outs of insurance to the point where it could pass standardized exams.

The final product is what Iram describes as “an army of the world’s best assistants,” and that knowledge base is constantly evolving.

“The secret sauce at Flow is that we have the best mix of industry experts, insurance experts as well as technology experts together building a brokerage that is built to deliver for small, medium businesses,” Iram said.

Servicing a gap

The impetus behind Flow building America’s first “AI insurance broker” was a noticeable gap in service and coverage for SMEs, leading to billions in uninsured losses every year.

Iram suggested this could be due to a commission model that makes larger businesses more worth agents’ time. Nonetheless, it’s why Flow targets the mid-market segment specifically, with a goal to bring enterprise-level service to them.

“There’s a huge gap there — a lack of access to knowledge, guidance and connection to the right carriers with these small and medium businesses. With Flow, our mission is to bring that level of service into this segment. And the way to do it, the leverage that we found, is through technology,” Iram said.

Built on expertise

Flow’s AI model is taught using proprietary data, including some from insurance carrier partners and transactional data that flows through Flow’s system.

Over time, the AI steadily became more knowledgeable and able to provide more consistent insight. When tested, it even passed standardized insurance exams such as the RPLU.

“We’ve had our AI agents go through the process to learn all the information that they needed to go through the exams and actually take the exams and pass them very, very successfully, I think with zero mistakes across the board. It was an exercise in rigor of knowledge, and it’s a huge milestone to be able to pass a standardized exam that all the expert brokers in the industry have to face,” Iram said.

How does the 'AI insurance broker' work?

Flow’s AI tool does not interact directly with clients. Instead, it offers support to brokers via email rather than a platform.

When a quote is received from an insurance carrier partner, the AI agent assesses that quote and provides a recommendation on how to handle it. A human broker then looks at the AI’s results “almost like reviewing an assistant’s task and changing or correcting it before they send it out to the client.”

Flow also built a prompt library to help their brokers communicate with the model more effectively.

“All those tasks require a very thorough, knowledgeable prompt library — and the people who write that prompt library are our insurance people. So, there’s continuous development, not only in building a more insightful model that understands insurance better but also asking it the right question in the right way for the information that it brings back to be really, really useful,” Iram explained.

Additionally, the finished product is fed back into the AI, training it to perform even better every time with fewer edits required by the broker.

“Instead of asking retail brokers to do it themselves on this login platform, we work with them through emails, we give them access to the best carriers in the market and we do all the legwork for them,” he said. “We just do it super efficiently because we have this system, this army, so to speak, of the world’s best assistants.”

Future playbook

Iram acknowledged there has been some concern about AI potentially replacing human jobs. However, Flow believes it has found an ideal hybrid solution that marries technological advancement with human capital perfectly.

He emphasized that insurance remains a “hugely human industry” and adapting to innovation only improves that.

“I strongly believe we’re building the playbook of how the brokerages of the future will be built. We’re seeing [AI] as a huge enabler, rather than a risk to mitigate… Still, we have people every step of the way to be able to be there when they’re needed,” Iram said.

Flow Specialty is a wholesale specialty broker founded in 2021 and based out of Mountain View, Calif. Its key areas of expertise are cyber, management and professional liabilities.

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