Worksite flexibility is one of the top ways that insurance businesses attract new staff, and that plays out in the results of the 2025 Independent Insurance Agent Survey mounted by PropertyCasualty360 in partnership with the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents, and with support this year from Steadily.
More than three out of four of today’s insurance agencies offer some degree of remote work, according to the survey results, with nearly half of respondents reporting that all employees work remotely.
Some of the other strategies that agencies use to retain and motivate employees include offering a casual, relaxed workplace (78%), upgraded technology and equipment (65%), and providing ample training and professional development opportunities.
None-the-less, the industry’s talent gap persists, and remains a stress for insurance organizations of all sizes.
“Employees are aging out,” one survey respondent wrote. “We need to find a way to attract and keep younger employees.”
Another indicated that “finding and keeping employees” is among the top challenges facing today’s insurance agencies, along with “management issues, discontent agents [and] hard market issues.”
Other respondents lamented that today’s insurance staffing conundrum isn’t just about recruitment, it’s about finding “good people who can work with modern tools and be willing to learn and change from old habits.”
Pushing back against AI
In 2024, the Independent Insurance Agent Survey asked respondents which areas of business they believed would most benefit from AI. This year, we asked respondents exactly how they’re using the tool. Based on those responses, it appears that insurance agencies continue to be hesitant to break from established (sometimes analog) processes.
Only 26% of respondents in 2025 said they are using AI for marketing communications. (More than 45% said in 2024 they thought that would be a good use for the tool.) There was no area of business in 2025 in which AI seems to dominate. In fact, nearly half of respondents said they’re not using AI all (at least, as far as they know).
Concerns about AI persist, although they are not as pronounced as they were in 2024. This year, 59% of survey respondents said they worry AI will provide inaccurate information (compared to 64% in 2024). Also this year, about half of respondents (52%) said they worry about data security compared to 62% in 2024.
This year’s survey results — some of which are broken out in the slideshow above — also indicate what factors today’s insurance agencies take into account when selecting new technology and the exact tech they are currently using or planning to use in the year to come.
Keep an eye on PropertyCasualty360 for additional coverage and analysis from the 2025 Independent Insurance Agent Survey. And be sure to register and attend “Masters of Uncertainty,” our upcoming webcast about the survey results.
See also: 2025 Agent Survey (Part 1): Agency demographics begin to shift
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