Charlie Hicks (pictured) is not worried about AI replacing insurance brokers. He is more interested in what it will reveal.
As the industry debates AI's impact on broking, the managing director of EIC Insurance Services sees the technology exposing a distinction that has existed for years: brokers who advise clients will become more valuable, while those who simply process renewals will find it harder to justify their role.
Much of the discussion around AI centres on efficiency, but Hicks' focus is on value.
"The dynamic of COVID, the ease of video calls – it has many advantages," he said. "But the emphasis of making the effort to go out and see people, to interact, to have a personal approach, to be able to relate – that is probably more important than ever."
The argument rests on a simple premise that conversations in a client's workplace reveal risks that rarely emerge through email exchanges or annual renewal calls. Technology should create more time for those conversations, not replace them.
Hicks reserved his strongest criticism for brokers whose client relationships have become largely transactional.
"You might as well be a comparison site," he said. "If you're doing that, you've added nothing to the relationship."
He recalled spotting £300,000 of equipment during a client visit that had never been disclosed because the client had simply forgotten to mention it. The anecdote illustrated the difference between administering policies and advising clients. It also underpinned what Hicks described as "lazy broking".
If lazy broking is being exposed at the individual level, Hicks sees the same test playing out at scale through consolidation.
As larger groups absorb regional brokerages and centralise operations, local relationships can disappear, leaving room for independent firms that stay visible in their communities to pick up the advisory ground that gets lost in the process.
"They don't want a suit that rocks up once a year with an invoice," he said. "They want someone they can relate to, that knows their business, knows the area, feels the same pains that you do."
EIC has completed acquisitions of its own, but Hicks said cultural fit had consistently outweighed scale.
"You can't smash it all together and go, 'Oh, that makes our EBITDA look high, that makes us worth more money,'" he said. "You will end up with loads of staff attrition, client attrition. You've got to think about the cultural fit. It's a people business at the end of the day."
The lesson, he suggested, is the same one AI is exposing elsewhere in the market: efficiency and scale can sharpen a business, but neither can substitute for the relationship-led advice that justifies a broker's role in the first place.
Hicks sees AI as a practical tool for helping smaller firms compete more effectively.
"It's not fearing it – it's being able to use it in the right way that speeds up your efficiencies, that allows you to then compete," he said. "But not losing what got you there in the first place is going to be more important than ever."
He also argued that insurance has long struggled to communicate the value of advice in the way professions such as law and accountancy have.
"As an industry, we're not great at promoting the advice-led side in comparison to some of our peers like solicitors and accountants," he said. "At times we just fall back on trying to make it cheaper. But we're here to try and get claims paid at the end of the day and mitigate risk."
As more of the administrative side of broking becomes automated, the distinction between processing policies and providing advice becomes harder to ignore. AI may not replace brokers, but it is making it much clearer which ones clients genuinely value.
