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[music] [music] >> Hello everybody, welcome to Insurance Business TV. We are here at Insurance Fest 2026 for another of our peer-to-peer interviews and right now I'm meeting Dan Schulemann. He is the CEO and co-founder of Qumis AI. So I think we have to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence in that case, Dan, if that's all right with you. >> It's the talk of town. >> It is indeed. Well, tell me about the most meaningful way that you're seeing AI or indeed connected data

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already changing underwriting or claims versus perhaps what's just all hype. >> There is a lot of hype. All right. Now, there is a lot of hype. On the claims front, we're seeing some really novel arguments for coverage being made and used successfully, particularly on the claims advocate side, which is really interesting. Um we had a customer of ours actually have a barn that was knocked down. Um it was the broker for the customer. Um and uh the barn was knocked down, there wasn't any coverage on the

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barn, and the carrier was going to be issuing a denial, but uh someone used our platform to analyze the policy, look for any coverage arguments and hooks, uh and found out that actually there was an argument for coverage under a separate policy, um and they argued that successfully and got it covered. Uh so it was a million-dollar recovery. Uh used the analysis from AI with the claim that the professional thought wasn't going to be covered. Um so those types of stories keep me going. I love that. Uh cuz you

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know, I think the insurance companies purposely try to hide things on these hard-to-read documents, and so AI is coming for that. Uh and I'm excited about that. >> Of course, you're clearly very forward-thinking in the AI world, but insurance itself is always accused of lagging behind. In in in what areas do you think it is lagging at the moment? >> I do think it's lagging on AI. >> Okay. >> So, you know, I started my career as a practicing insurance attorney.

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>> Yep. >> Um so I was very plugged in into legal tech. Um, and actually I think that uh legal has done a good job being innovative and I saw a lot of innovation happening in legal and law. Um, a lot of it inspired me to think, okay, how can there be similar tools like this for insurance contracts? >> Yep. >> Um, cuz that wasn't really happening over in insurance. Um, and I really think it's the kind of risk-averse nature insurance people deal with risk. >> Yes.

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>> So they're risk-averse. So I get it. Uh, but you know, the AI adoption, um, it's tough, you know, the insurance, there's a lot of paper pushing. Uh, so it's ripe for AI and I think there's just so much opportunity that it's hard to figure out kind of methodically where do you want to start, how do you want to do it, what's right, what's wrong, there's a lot of compliance considerations, legal considerations, so it makes it challenging, but I do think compared to, you know, other

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industries and even other regulated verticals, insurance is lagging in in AI adoption. >> Well, you spoke about the industry being traditionally risk-averse towards tech. What do you think are the biggest barriers for it to overcome? >> I think the accuracy is tough. Um, you know, when insurance professionals are making critical mission, you know, mission-critical decisions on coverage or reading these policies, uh, you can't be wrong. Um, there's huge consequences for being wrong.

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>> Yep. >> Uh, so that leads naturally to the risk-averse nature of doing this stuff. So, um, you know, I personally think for the really hard stuff and complex and specialty lines that AI has a little bit of ways to go before it can actually consistently do that stuff. So we're going to need humans in the driving seat for a long time um, to come, but uh that's why, you know, we build tools like ours that uh are designed for that hard stuff to, you know, assist and cognitively augment

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what the professionals are doing. >> Uh, paint a picture for us as well, if you don't mind. What does a an insurer's tech stack look like, say, 5 years from now, particularly things that maybe we're not used to at the moment? >> There is going to be a lot more autonomous agentic actions going on >> Right. >> that are going to be queuing things up for the humans to act upon. But in my view, they're still going to be the humans to be acting upon. >> Yes.

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>> Which, you know, not everyone agrees with that vision. But, you know, we primarily deal with complex commercial P&C. And in that world, it's largely relationship driven. And so, I think there's going to be just more of a focus on the relationships and less of a focus on having to really go into the weeds on the coverages. Cuz that's going to be able to be handled by AI. So, I think the advisory aspects are going to be even more important. The human connection aspects are going to be even more

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important. And a lot of the tedious stuff that people don't like doing anyway is really going to go away. So, that's a net positive. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, I think in that vision, there's still a lot of people doing their job. So, I think there's a lot of fear about AI replacing jobs. And I think for a large part, depending on the segment, that's not going to happen. >> [music]