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For insurance professionals, from claims adjusters to risk managers, brokers to legal counsel, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t a distant future. It’s happening now, and its mission critical.
As AI continues to reshape the insurance and legal landscape, one truth stands out: the conversation shouldn’t center on whether AI will replace jobs, but on how professionals can evolve alongside it. In the property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector especially, the real opportunity lies in building human-AI collaboration that reduces inefficiencies without sidelining the experts who understand the work best.
Why AI matters now more than ever
In P&C insurance, time is money. But so is accuracy. Whether managing a rise in natural disaster claims, sorting through liability disputes, or handling workers’ compensation cases, the amount of data involved has ballooned. At the heart of it all are medical records, and lots of them.
One of the clearest examples of AI-driven collaboration in action is medical records retrieval. In the past, this process required significant manual effort, including requesting files, following up with providers, scanning for relevant information, and ensuring that records were complete.
Now, AI can automatically track requests, digitize files, flag gaps, and summarize key medical facts. That means faster claims resolution, less administrative burden, and improved cost control. For overworked claims professionals or legal teams under pressure to meet tight deadlines, AI is more than a convenience. It’s a necessity.
This significantly reduces turnaround times, ensuring that claims teams and legal counsel have the necessary information to move forward with confidence. It’s not about cutting corners. It’s about doing more with less friction. But adopting AI responsibly doesn’t mean letting the machines run the show. It means understanding how to pair the strengths of automation with the strengths of human expertise.
Striking the right balance
AI is great at handling scale. It can classify thousands of documents in seconds, summarize medical findings, and automatically flag missing information. That speed can shave days, or, at best, even weeks, off claims processing time. But the ability to speed through processes isn’t the same as real, legitimate judgment.
P&C claims often involve complex, messy, and unstructured data. Handwritten doctor’s notes, conflicting reports, or scanned PDFs that aren’t Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-readable come to mind. These aren’t tasks to be handed off to AI alone. A machine might flag an anomaly, which is more than helpful. But it takes a trained human to determine whether that anomaly is relevant to a case or merely unnecessary noise.
Legal teams and adjusters still need to interpret context, read between the lines, and understand how one injury may affect a claimant’s long-term prognosis. In litigation, these details can make or break a defense. That’s why AI is helpful, but human oversight is essential to preserve the integrity of claim files.
Empowering teams, not replacing them
The most effective organizations aren’t using AI to take the easy road and cut headcount. Instead, they’re using it to free up their experts to do what they do best: think critically, solve complex problems, and deliver outcomes.
By eliminating what is effectively grunt work, businesses give professionals more time to focus on higher-value tasks. That includes assessing risk, negotiating settlements, communicating with clients, or investigating potential fraud.
These are the kinds of tasks that AI can't (and shouldn’t) handle on its own.
The case for upskilling
Professionals in P&C need to be trained to work alongside AI, understanding how to effectively prompt AI tools, interpret the outputs they receive, and know when to question or escalate an AI-driven insight. This blend of technical literacy and domain expertise is what will separate the future-ready teams from the rest.
Additionally, as AI becomes embedded in everyday workflows, new roles are emerging that didn’t exist even five years ago. These professionals serve as liaisons between technology and human decision-makers, ensuring that the systems in place serve the people using them. This might involve training claims adjusters to utilize AI-assisted tools more strategically or equipping employees with the skills to validate automated summaries for litigation purposes.
Making progress with people and AI
AI brings scale, speed, and consistency. People bring judgment, empathy, and critical thinking. Organizations that align evolving roles with evolving technologies will not only operate more efficiently but will build more resilient, future-ready teams. That’s the kind of transformation that sticks not just for the next fiscal quarter, but for the long haul.
Shareen Minor is the Chief Revenue Officer at Ontellus, a leading provider of records retrieval and claims intelligence.A seasoned insurance executive with over 20 years of industry experience, Shareen has led high-performing teams and scaled commercial strategies across the U.S. Prior to Ontellus, she served as Chief Commercial Officer at a national professional services firm and held senior leadership roles at Engle Martin & Associates, NatGen Premier, and Fireman’s Fund. Her expertise lies in building cohesive go-to-market engines and unlocking long-term value for clients and stakeholders alike.
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