Insurance professionals are used to helping clients make sense of uncertainty. But at this year’s Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) conference, it was the profession itself asking the hard questions - about where it fits in a world of predictive analytics, automation and machine learning. According to CII chief executive Matthew Hill (pictured), the mood in the room was one of “tempered optimism” as attendees looked not only at what’s changing, but how fast.
Hill said what struck him most wasn’t just the theme, innovation, but the audience’s unusually focused attention. “Almost every time I looked around the auditorium, you had this audience that was really engaged with the content,” he said. “It didn’t feel like people were just there to collect CPD hours.”
That intensity, he believes, reflects a growing awareness that AI is not something that’s five years away. It’s already reshaping what professionals do across the sector - and, in some cases, whether their tasks still need to be done at all.
“We’re being forced to make sense of these incredible developments, moving at incredible pace,” Hill said. “Before you even get to what it means for the insurance sector, people are asking what it means for them personally, for their families, for their futures.”
The transformation is no longer theoretical. Hill recalled a recent visit to a large insurer where the complaints team had replaced hours of human review with instant AI summaries of customer calls. “It extracts the key information faster and with more accuracy than a human can, and that frees staff up to spend more time with customers.”
Across underwriting, broking and claims, the shift is just as real. “We ask professionals to do things manually, or at least inefficiently, when AI could be doing it better,” Hill said. That includes reviewing policy wordings, pulling out key claim details, or comparing product features across markets - work that once justified time and effort, but may now be done in seconds.
The value now moves from information delivery to interpretation and judgement. “Clients will still need someone they trust to help them navigate all this,” said Hill. “AI doesn’t replace listening, it should free us up to do more of it.”
More provocatively, Hill suggested professionals should be asking themselves a different kind of question entirely: “What will I do when AI becomes a better solution to the problems that insurance was created to solve?”
While technology changes fast, Hill insists that the principles of professionalism must not. “Ethics and values are transcendent and persistent,” he said. “Whether it’s delivered by hand or by machine, what matters is that the client is treated with fairness and respect.”
The CII’s role, he added, is not to create rigid rules for each new wave of technology, but to instil a way of thinking. “We can’t predict every delivery model,” said Hill. “But we can make sure professionals are asking the right questions when they deploy new tech: What message are we sending? Are we building trust, or just chasing profit?”
That mindset shift, he argues, is what will separate sustainable firms from those that commoditise their value too quickly. “If professionals understand why values matter, they’ll carry them forward, whether they’re handwriting a policy or generating a thousand with AI.”
Asked whether the industry is adapting fast enough, Hill was blunt: “Everyone is underestimating how much it will transform everyday roles, and I don’t blame them. It’s almost unimaginable,” he said.
That lack of imagination, he said, is natural. Like asking someone in a horse and cart to envision high-speed rail. But it’s also a risk. Many professionals worry about the disappearance of entry-level roles, the traditional proving ground for newcomers. Hill urged the sector to think more radically.
“If what you’re worried about is entry-level roles into the insurance profession as we know it, well, that profession might not exist in the same way. The real question is: entry to what?”
He noted that education and regulation, though crucial, will always trail the pace of innovation. “This is moving so fast that everyone is going to be late all of the time,” he said. “Our normal bureaucracies, and I don’t mean that pejoratively, are just not built for this speed.”
The implication is clear: the profession is being rewritten in real time. Those who move beyond transactions, lean into strategic guidance, and uphold trust in every decision will be the ones who define what it means to thrive in an AI-first era.
