Tackling Tech Transformation

Artificial intelligence has often been described as a magic bullet that will immediately solve a brokerage’s problems.

Often forgotten amid all the hype, though, is that AI is a tool—and, as with any tool, training employees how to use it properly is essential to unlock those promised transformative efficiencies.

Laurie Flanagan, chief innovation officer at Leavitt Group, and Josh Tinkle, chief growth and transformation officer at The Mahoney Group, have been working to integrate AI into their respective firms as a tool for employees. Both businesses partner with insurtech accelerator BrokerTech Ventures, which has given them crucial insights into what solutions peer firms are implementing and how they are scaling them. But knowing the best solution isn’t enough to succeed—ensuring talent is both trained and willing to take advantage of a new tool is just as important.

For Tinkle and Flanagan, the two most important components of this change management are fostering employee understanding of how AI will update how they work and implementing effective leadership strategies to guide teams through the process.

The New Brokerage Employee

Neither Flanagan nor Tinkle think that AI will ultimately change the core work of a brokerage. “If you’re a producer, you’re still selling; if you’re an account manager, you’re still servicing; if you’re an accountant, you’re still managing accounting functions,” says Flanagan. What will change, they say, is how that work is accomplished.

For Flanagan, the biggest shift within Leavitt Group has been to staff workflow. Employees are using AI to reduce turnaround time, smooth out areas of friction, and provide additional knowledge they can use when servicing clients. For example, if AI can handle much of the data analysis and processing, employees can focus even more on building relationships and delivering a higher level of customer service, she says.

Transforming workflows also undergirds The Mahoney Group’s approach to integrating AI, Tinkle says. “We’re intentional for first and foremost taking an integration first-approach,” he explains. “We’re not layering AI and technology on top of existing processes, we’re rethinking workflows altogether.” AI takes the rote administrative work employees typically have to do off their plates, he says, allowing them to refocus their work on what creates the most value: advising clients, building relationships, and making strategic decisions.

The BTV partnership has been helpful here as well, Tinkle and Flanagan say. As broker partners of BTV, they gain access to BTV’s existing network of peer brokerage partner firms and Collab-Labs. That offers opportunities to learn about what has worked and what hasn’t with AI deployment and lets them “shortcut a lot of trial and error,” in Tinkle’s words. “Collaboratively,” Flanagan emphasizes, “we’re a lot better.”

Leading the Change

This change must be driven from the top to avoid uncertainty and so the organization truly evolves. For Tinkle, leadership “has to provide clarity and consistency” on AI integration. That means being clear about why and how a firm is using the technology, he says: “regular communication, clear expectations, making sure people understand how they fit into the future state of the business.”

At Leavitt Group, Flanagan says their approach to change management has been to “crawl, walk, then run.” That starts with building a foundation of basic skills—in Leavitt Group’s case, that could mean prompt engineering classes or AI training for a particular role and leveling up from there.

Tinkle and Flanagan, like many colleagues across the industry, emphasized that AI cannot replace the human aspect of insurance. “Insurance is based on relationships,” Flanagan says. “That’s not going to change. That’s always the case. If we can use AI to make us more efficient to then elevate that relationship and for us to bring greater value to it, that’s what we want to do.”