How AI Is Changing the Roles of Account Managers and CSRs
From Verizon CEO Dan Schulman predicting that AI will cause unemployment to rise by up to 30% in the next two to five years to the Boston Consulting Group suggesting that 10-15% of existing jobs may be cut by 2031, there’s fear and concern in almost every sector.
But what does this mean for front-line insurance employees in an independent agency? How is AI changing the roles of account managers, account executives, and other support staff, and how might emerging AI technology change these roles in the future?
That’s a question that cannot be answered with total confidence, but there’s plenty of expert speculation to consider.
“I think we’re going to see a lot more layoffs because of AI,” Ryan Hanley, president of Linqura AI, who is a frequent speaker and podcaster on all things insurtech related, told Insurance Journal late last year. Any person doing “repeatable tasks” is at risk.
However, the best agency account managers are likely not in that category, others say.
“Many traditional things that an account manager type role would do–whether that’s certificates or endorsements or coverage changes, renewal follow-ups, policy reconciliation–those are things that could potentially be automated,” said Kasey Conners, the Big “I’s” executive director of the Agents Council for Technology. There’s definitely concern about job elimination in these areas, but right now, nobody has really figured out the exact areas to be concerned about, she added.
“From a Big I perspective, there’s the account services coordinator and then there’s a piece of it that really is a client advisor,” she said. “That’s not going to go away.”
Many agency owners are taking a cautionary approach to the real benefits that AI will bring to their agencies, said Mary Newgard, partner at Capstone Search Group. They are mostly optimistic that AI capabilities in their agency management systems will reduce backroom servicing.
“It’s costly for agencies to manage behind-the-scenes processing, whether they choose to do so in-house or outsource,” she said. “If AI can assume those service functions, then agencies stand to save a lot of time and money paying people to do those tasks.”
‘Someone who can build relationships and strategize with clients, consult on coverage and give options, help with complex issues, recommend policy enhancements, and so forth, doesn’t seem to be as easily replaced with technology.’
That doesn’t mean the human touch will not be necessary in agency service roles, she added. The independent agencies that Newgard advises do not foresee AI replacing any service positions that “heavily interact with clients.”
Those positions that are “client engaging” or “client facing” are valued and are not likely to be impacted much by the AI revolution, she said.
“Someone who can build relationships and strategize with clients, consult on coverage and give options, help with complex issues, recommend policy enhancements, and so forth, doesn’t seem to be as easily replaced with technology,” Newgard said. However, she does think that service positions that are only administrative with little to no client interaction could be cut.
“I would recommend to anyone who’s a CSR or account manager to do everything possible to ensure what they bring to their role includes a lot of client interaction and engagement in diverse and impactful ways that can’t be easily replaced by technology,” she advised.
In this magazine issue, Insurance Journal recognizes 18 account managers and CSRs who have become “MVPs” in the area of agency service and support. Insurance Journal spoke with three of those MVPs about how technology is changing what they do and what they recommend to others. Here’s what they had to say.
Michelle Salow
When Michelle Salow began as an assistant account manager at Heffernan in 2003, she was doing things a lot differently than she does today.
“At that time, I physically had a stack of endorsements printed–like additional insured and lost pay endorsements that we would manually type out, print, attach these endorsements, and mail them,” she said. Years later the agency moved to an online platform that allowed certificates for endorsements to be processed via PDFs and email.
Today, almost everything is accessible via an online platform that allows clients to input their information directly, eliminating the steps needed to print, scan, sign, and return via email. The past two years have been another “game changer” as AI capabilities in the agency’s tech stack brought more efficiencies, Salow said.
“Now, we can use AI to do at least the initial phases of a lot of the tasks that take up a lot of our time,” she explained. This ranges from initial proposals for the clients to policy checks. AI can check policies against the proposal and quote. “Then account managers are just having to verify the information that doesn’t match or that’s questionable,” she said. That saves considerable time.
“Oftentimes we’re having to do premium comparisons, coverage comparisons, and loss summaries for clients. But now there’s AI tools that you can drop information into,” she said. “It’ll spit out those comparisons or some loss tables, find loss trends, and then we’re just taking that information and reviewing it for accuracy. It’s a much quicker way to get all the tedious work done.”
Salow, now an executive account manager, isn’t worried about AI replacing her expertise.
“I think there is still enough of a need for client touch that AI isn’t eliminating many positions,” she said. “Our clients still very much engage on a very regular basis with us, and so AI can’t do that personal touch.”
Kimberly Garza
For Higginbotham’s Kimberly Garza, a senior commercial lines CSR, technology and AI bring both pros and cons. But for Garza, a 38-year industry veteran, AI has mostly been a “pro” to the way she and others work.
“To be completely honest, when they first introduced AI, I thought, ‘I’m too old for this,'” Garza said. “But it’s just like anything else–it has its pros and it has its cons.” For example, AI policy checking has been a “great thing,” she noted.
“It checks everything,” she said. “It checks the policy against the proposal that was submitted to the client, and it also checks against the proposal, the policy, and our agency management system–all three.”
Garza admits: “At first, I thought, ‘Oh no, this is not for me,’ but now I love it.” It saves a great deal of time for the account manager, she said. Prior to the AI’s implementation, a person had to manually check the policy against the proposal for entry into the agency’s AMS. “Now we don’t have to manually do that,” she added.
Garza said even with the new changes she doesn’t worry about the future role of account managers being eliminated by AI.
“I’ve been in the industry for almost 38 years now, and the client relationship has always been most important,” she said. “Even with AI, you’re still going to need that human contact to maintain your current clients and also to get new clients.” AI is great, but it’s not a human who can explain the details that insureds rely on, she added.
‘See where AI is failing–it always will at some level because it is not for complex situations–and make sure you are there to fix that.’
Ashley Zumbado
Ashley Zumbado doesn’t fear AI’s influence. She embraces it to help improve her clients’ experience.
Zumbado is a senior account manager in private client services for Acrisure in Miami, Florida. She spends her spare time researching how to remove administrative burdens by leveraging AI to improve client experience, data analysis, and operational efficiency within the high-net-worth personal lines space.
Innovative approaches that help improve the client relationship with AI-based technology–that’s the future of insurance, she said. AI will not replace her skills; instead, it helps to fortify what she already does for her clients, she told Insurance Journal.
“The insurance industry, specifically the high-net-worth space, is completely driven by relationships, and I think that is at the forefront of everything we do,” Zumbado said. “Technology and AI–it’s our partner, and it’s not against us.”
Insurance is a complex product. And when it comes to complexities, which are notorious in the high-net-worth space, AI fails, she said.
“And where AI fails, this is where we have to connect the dots,” she said. AI is the tool that helps; it’s the second ingredient. “The first is the relationship.”
Zumbado suggests that other account managers immerse themselves in understanding how AI can help support the role of account managers, not replace it.
“See where AI is failing–it always will at some level because it is not for complex situations–and make sure you are there to fix that,” she said. “We are the relationship builders, and that is how we’re going to keep our clients.”