Insurance brokers should move quickly on artificial intelligence but treat it as hands-on operational work, and put controls around how their own staff use it, senior insurer executives told brokers at the Insurance Brokers Association of Ontario’s (IBAO) 2026 convention in Toronto.
Peter Janzen (pictured centre left), executive vice-president and president of Intact Insurance Canada, said the industry is only at the start of working out what the technology can do.
“I think we’re still like in the first inning here,” Janzen said. “What I get more than people telling me about what they’re doing is asking us what we can do and how to use it.”
Janzen said Intact’s advice to brokers is to adopt the technology, while avoiding vendors promising quick fixes.
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“What we preach and what we counsel is that you should embrace it. You should be curious and not cautious with it. You should lean in on this, but be wary of the glossy sales pitch coming out of LinkedIn saying ‘We have AI and we’re going to clean up your back office’,” he said.
He said the insurer’s experience shows that results come from narrow, specific projects.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time at Intact. We’ve got 1,200 people in our lab that just do this, and I can tell you it is roll up your sleeves, get into your operation, identify a very specific administrative problem that you want to crack and then solve it,” Janzen said. “It’s gritty work to go in and do this.”
He said brokers should treat AI as one more tool for solving operational problems.
Paul Fletcher (pictured second from left), managing director of Aviva Business & Broker Distribution, described AI as a “massively exciting domain” that has “some scary bits to it.”
Fletcher said he argued at last year’s convention that the industry was focused on the efficiency gains AI could deliver, but was overlooking how the technology is changing customers’ businesses and lives, and with them, their risk profiles. He said that remains an opening for brokers.
“If I were a broker, I would really start thinking about the segments that I’m most active in and understand that, because that would help me explain that risk to an underwriter, and also help a customer understand how their risks might change as well,” Fletcher said. “That’s really the role that everybody in this room has – help people evaluate the risk and work out the best way to manage it.”
Aviva, like the other insurers on the panel, is introducing AI to improve service and the quality of advice, he said. But the data involved raises the stakes.
“We are mostly dealing with information that is really personal to a consumer, and really important to a business customer of ours. We can only successfully innovate if we have the trust, and that means we can’t drop the ball on this stuff,” Fletcher said. “We’ve got to keep it secure. We’ve got to have transparency about how we are able to use it and reassure our customers and our business partners that we’ve got our arms around it.”
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He put the question directly to brokerage owners in the room.
“If you’ve got 20 staff, I guarantee that one of them is playing with AI in your business. Do you know about it? Do you have a policy around it?” Fletcher said. “Your business is built on trust with your clients.”
Matthew Turack (pictured second from right), group president and chief operating officer of CAA Insurance, said CAA has a policy on human-guided use of AI, and that the goal is to free up brokers’ and staff time to give more advice to consumers. Efficiency gains that don’t add expenses should also help stabilize pricing, he said.
“It’s you guys that consumers trust. It’s not the technology. Technology can aid that, but it’s you and ultimately your advice that they are entrusting,” Turack said.
Paul MacDonald (pictured centre right), executive vice-president of personal insurance and digital channels at Definity, said AI can help brokers and insurers educate customers on topics such as home resilience.
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“If there’s one thing that AI is very good at, it’s providing information,” MacDonald said.
Janzen acknowledged the risks Fletcher raised, but said the industry has to move quickly regardless. He compared the task to how society came to trust air travel.
“We have somehow, as a society, gotten to a point where we’re comfortable getting in a metal tube and flying through the sky, burning jet fuel behind us. And the reason we’ve done that is we built a system around it with a lot of training around pilots, two pilots, humans in the loop on every big decision,” Janzen said. “It’s the same principles that will eventually apply to AI.”
“We’re just really early, so it’s going to be fine in our opinion. But we need to make sure we’re figuring it out as we go,” he said.
