If an AI agent can read a policy's fine print, compare every option on the market, and switch coverage on a consumer's behalf, the obvious question is what role remains for a human broker. According to Puneet Chattree (pictured), insurance industry lead at Accenture in Canada, the answer depends entirely on how brokers respond in the next few years, and right now the industry is deeply split on what that response should be.

"I'm hearing from some brokers that nothing's going to change, that they'll keep the same level of market share," Chattree said. "But I'm also hearing from a big fragment of mid-market brokers who say there's a real risk here, in terms of sustainable growth and potentially getting consolidated."

That divergence, Chattree said, comes down to whether a brokerage has a clear enough value proposition to justify its role once AI can handle the comparison-shopping function that has traditionally been part of a broker's job. Brokers who assume their position is protected by habit or existing client relationships, he said, may find that assumption tested faster than they expect, particularly as younger consumers who have never relied on a traditional broker relationship enter the market. For small business and personal insurance in particular, he said, brokerages need to rethink how they show up in the process from the very beginning.

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"For small business or personal insurance shopping, brokerages need to really focus on being authoritative sources of content," Chattree said. "They have to think about their own search optimization strategy and that consumer buying journey on showing up well in AI searches."

At the earliest stage of a consumer's search, Chattree said, it doesn't actually matter to the AI tool, or to the consumer, whether the relevant option is a brokerage or a carrier directly. What matters is simply whether that brokerage appears at all when an AI agent goes looking for options on a client's behalf, and whether the information available about that brokerage is structured in a way an AI system can actually read and act on.

"In that first stage of the journey, it doesn't matter whether you're a brokerage or a carrier," Chattree said. "The consumer is simply asking, where do I go, and what's my relationship here that gets me that proposition?"

Getting found is only the starting point, Chattree said. Brokerages also need to think through the entire journey an AI-assisted consumer will take, from initial contact through data collection, quoting, payment, and ongoing engagement, and make sure each of those steps is built to work smoothly with an AI intermediary rather than assuming a human will be guiding the process throughout. A brokerage that shows up well in an initial AI search but then requires a slow, manual handoff to a person for every subsequent step, he said, risks losing the consumer at exactly the point where competitors built for this journey would keep them engaged.

Handled well, Chattree said, this shift rewards brokerages willing to lean into what makes them distinct from a pure price-comparison function, rather than something to be feared.

"If brokerages do it right, they remain an authoritative, independent source, and now they have new access to leads coming in from an LLM standpoint," Chattree said. "There's a massive opportunity there, but they need to meet the moment with the right strategy and discipline around their process and operating model."

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Part of that opportunity, he said, involves moving away from a model built primarily around price comparison and toward something more holistic, one where a brokerage's value is defined by advice, service, and its ability to combine offerings from multiple carriers into something a single AI-driven comparison couldn't easily replicate on its own. This kind of bundled, relationship-driven proposition, he said, is precisely the layer of value that pure price aggregation was never designed to replace, and it's where brokerages have the clearest opening to differentiate themselves going forward.

"They can start thinking smartly about how to become more holistic in their offering, from a servicing standpoint and an advice standpoint," Chattree said. "How do you actually connect different components from different carriers to build a more bundled proposition for affinity segments?"

The biggest obstacle for brokers right now, Chattree said, isn't necessarily AI itself, but the mindset some brokerages bring to it, treating the shift as something to defend against rather than a distribution channel that rewards the brokers who adapt fastest.

"Canadian brokers need to see the long-term potential for growth created through agentic commerce and get out of their head that this is actually a threat," Chattree said.