Lead with AI or risk being left behind

LAS VEGAS - Artificial intelligence can help advisors create a new client journey to make insurance “the new cool.”

That was the word from Panos Leledakis, CEO and founder of the IFA Academy, one of the panelists who spoke about why advisors must lead with AI or risk being left behind during Protectors 2026.

“The AI revolution is the fastest revolution humanity ever experienced,” Leledakis said. “We are living in the experience and convenience economy. You need to give your clients and amazing experience. Consumers expect fast service.”

Leledakis described how he created 30 AI employees who work for him, doing tasks that free him to see more clients and take on more high-level work.

He said one key to AI success is engineering better prompts.

“We need to be masters of prompt engineering – we’ve all heard the saying about garbage in, garbage out,” he said. “There is a whole science around prompting.”

Leledakis told the audience they also need to know how to use AI without regulatory risk and how to avoid AI mistakes.

“If you cannot service clients immediately, you can be your own AI support, trained with your knowledge, and serve clients 24/7. You can create a text agent, a voice agent and an AI clone.”

‘Your clients are already doing it’

Clients are already using AI tools such as ChatGPT to research insurance products, so you need to find ways to use AI as well, said Steve Cain of LTCI Partners.

”When you suggest a solution, your clients probably go to their phone and research it. You have to assume all your clients are looking at it and finding the answer – but it might not be the right answer.”

AI can help advisors simplify compliance documents so that clients understand them, Cain said.

“Emotions create decisions and logic supports them. Keep it simple. You can do this on your own,” he said.

He showed how he put policy illustrations into an AI model and created a “whiteboard” for clients to compare different carriers.

Cain also said he instructed AI to look at his company’s entire workflow – “from the time the client calls us on the phone to the time the insurance carrier delivers the policy” – to map out a smoother workflow.

The various stages of using AI

Companies are in various stages of using AI tools, said Jeffrey Williams, managing director and insurance industry advisor with Microsoft.

The first stage is what he called “a frontier company.” This is when a company uses chatbots or ChatGPT to improve their performance.

The second stage is what he described as human-agent teams. “It’s about using applications to perform tasks that were unthought of yesterday,” he said. At this stage, prompting is the key to getting the best results from AI tools. As AI tools better understand how you write and think, and as these tools are used more frequently, they become more powerful. “Not tools, but teammates,” he said.

The third stage is human-led and agent-operated. This stage leads to the demise of organizational hierarchy, Williams said.

At this point, organizations will be less about hierarchies and more about outcomes.

Williams said AI tools can “unleash the power of the company through its data.”

He said data often resides in different silos, making it difficult to access.

“AI can turn your data into an advantage,” he said.

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Susan Rupe is editor in chief, magazine, for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at susan.rupe@innfeedback.com.