IAT Insurance Group’s modernization strategy is now entering its most consequential phase. Todd Bateson (pictured), executive vice president at IAT Insurance Group, says the company has spent nearly a decade rebuilding its technology infrastructure from the ground up and is now focused on the harder question: what to build on top of it.
"The ultimate goal is to make sure that we are engaging with our agent customers, collaborating with them to identify and come up with answers and solutions to their insured's needs, and to be able to do it quickly and accurately," Bateson said. "In order to reach that goal, we had to modernize our framework."
With that foundation largely in place, IAT is now turning its attention to optimization, arming its underwriters and claims professionals with predictive modeling, AI, and data tools that allow them to respond with both speed and precision.
Transformation of this scale does not succeed without organizational alignment, and Bateson is direct about what that requires. Leadership – from middle management to the C-suite – must be unified and moving in the same direction. At IAT, that discipline is maintained through a monthly governance group that works with executive management to set strategy, monitor project progress, and course correct where needed. Those strategic priorities and expectations are then communicated at an annual leadership meeting to all middle management.
But top-down direction alone is insufficient. IAT embeds change management into every project, starting with input from the people who will actually use the technology being built.
"Those of us at the executive level don't know all the details that happen at the desk level," he said. "So we engage with the people using the technology, gain their input, and constantly check in to make sure what we're developing is aligning with what they're telling us."
Middle management plays a defined role in this process, often serving as subject-matter experts or project sponsors with accountability for rollout effectiveness within their business units. When new systems are deployed, IAT tracks adoption across the workforce, identifying individuals who may need additional coaching, training, or guidance rather than assuming a uniform pace of change.
"Not everyone learns the same way, in the same fashion, or in the same time frame," Bateson said. "We check in throughout the rollout to make sure we understand where every employee stands relative to their embracing of the change."
As IAT moves into its optimization phase, the build-versus-buy question has become central to its technology strategy. Bateson describes a structured cost-benefit process that the company applies to each major initiative, evaluating internal capability, timeline, vendor maturity, and cost differentials before making a decision. That framework is now being applied directly to AI, where the carrier is actively assessing vendors while also determining whether certain capabilities could be developed in-house.
"We're working through that now as we think about AI solutions for our organization," Bateson said. "We're evaluating various vendors, but we're also assessing whether we could build these capabilities ourselves."
The decision to handle change management internally rather than bringing in external consultants reflects a similar philosophy. IAT believes its internal teams are best positioned to drive adoption because they understand both the organization and how the systems will be used day to day, allowing for more effective rollout, training and long-term success.
Bateson has spent 40 years in the insurance industry. When he started underwriting, technology was essentially absent from the desk. Now, underwriters have access to vast amounts of third-party data and unstructured information that would have been unimaginable at the start of his career. He expects that pace to accelerate further, driven by computing power and the continued development of major technology platforms.
"The evolution, particularly in the last five to ten years, has just quickened dramatically," he said. "I would imagine that's going to be the norm going forward.."
Insurance, he argues, is particularly positioned to benefit from these advances given the volume and variety of unstructured data flowing through underwriting and claims processes. But he identifies one significant variable: the regulators.
Every state maintains its own insurance department with authority over how carriers operate. Bateson expects regulatory scrutiny of AI to intensify, particularly around bias in decision-making and whether automated systems can be trusted to operate without human oversight.
"Depending on how regulators approach things, that could slow things down, or it could create a need to have the human in the loop more than a straight agentic process where the system is making the decision entirely," he said. "That regulatory piece could have a real impact.”
