The Insura-Preneur Podcast

AI has jumped the shark.
It is not a future technology conversation anymore. It is an acting agent, making real decisions, sometimes decisions nobody authorized. Michael Jans lays out the evidence from Q3 2026 and what it means for your agency right now.
Inside the episode:
→ A submissions vendor processing unstructured business at 87% accuracy
→ A Canadian insurer issuing real-time life insurance decisions up to $5M with no teleinterview and no medical evidence
→ An OpenAI containment incident where models took actions their own handlers never authorized
→ AGI Holdings' $70M raise to buy independent agencies and rebuild them on a native AI stack
→ 1Fort, Parametric MGA, and Vertafore's six-tool AI rollout
→ The NAIC AI Model Bulletin, now live in 20+ jurisdictions
→ The 3-Question Vendor Test: Threat, Default, Audit
Michael also shares how one AI Growth Academy member added $125,000 in income from direct mail using the Sales Letter Studio.
If you write commercial lines and you are not asking your vendors these three questions yet, this episode changes that today.
Stay ahead of what is coming next: AIBriefingRoom.com

AI vendors are sending bots into carrier portals right now — using the same shared login credentials your team has always used to sign in. The carriers are the ones on the hook for whatever those bots touch, and it's already showing up as regulatory risk: New York alone has fined insurers millions of dollars over cybersecurity failures under its Part 500 rules.
In this episode of AI for the IA, Michael sits down with Alvito Vaz, Executive Director of ID Federation and a 30-plus-year veteran of insurance technology, to unpack how the industry got here and what actually fixes it. Alvito's point is blunt: this isn't a new problem, it's an old one wearing a new face. Agencies have shared credentials with colleagues for years. Now those same credentials are being handed to a hundred bots at once — and carriers have no reliable way to tell a bot from a person, or a controlled bot from an unsupervised one.
ID Federation's answer is SignOn Once, a standards-based trust framework that lets an agent authenticate once into their agency management system and pass a secure token on to carrier partners — no repeat logins, no repeat MFA prompts. It's already live with two of the industry's major AMS partners, Vertafore and Applied Systems. The piece still missing is carrier adoption — the third leg of what Alvito calls the channel's three-legged stool: carriers, agents, and technology providers.
That's the ask of this episode: agents can go to idfederation.org and use the "Engage Your Carriers" action to push their own carrier partners toward adoption. It's a five-minute step that moves a real industry-wide fix forward.

This week, underwriting took a visible step from AI-assisted toward AI-decided, and Michael Jans breaks down four vendor moves that all point the same direction.
Sixfold's AI Underwriter describes itself as "a new kind of colleague that arrives with underwriting expertise, learns each carrier's appetite, never forgets a decision, and knows the best action on every submission" — built as human-in-the-loop with configurable autonomy, not a fully autonomous decision-maker.
Applied Systems announced submission-less commercial renewals with Travelers as its first anchor carrier, powered by Cytora, Applied's agentic AI platform, delivering renewal quotes directly inside Applied Epic before remarketing even starts.
Duck Creek completed its acquisition of Send Technology Solutions on July 7, creating what the company calls the industry's only agentic underwriting-to-core platform. And hyperexponential launched hyperoperator, its new agentic underwriting workbench that takes broker submissions from email to quote inside carrier systems.
Michael also flags SortSpoke, which helps carriers and MGAs scale from roughly 10 to 50 submissions per underwriter per day, and GYDE, which raised $60 million to build what it calls "the first AI-native brokerage for ambitious agency owners."
On the regulatory side, Colorado's SB 26-189 takes effect January 1, 2027, naming insurance among the "consequential decision" categories that trigger pre-use notice and post-adverse-outcome disclosure requirements — a sign that underwriting-specific AI rules are arriving state by state.
Michael closes with a tease of his three-step framework for agency principals: leadership and governance first, then AI in the front of the house for the full ACOR (attract, convert, optimize, retain), then AI in the back of the house for efficiency.
Want to see the framework installed in your agency? https://aigrowthacademy.insure/

Fourteen AI-in-insurance signals landed in the past 60 days, and Michael Jans reads them as two doorways an independent-agency principal can walk through this week. Colorado's AI compliance window just closed for insurers, with carriers now in active documentation mode and 11 more states watching via the NAIC 12-state pilot. ISO CG 40 47 and CG 40 48 endorsements have been carving AI-related bodily injury, property damage, and advertising injury out of standard CGL since January. Willis just documented silent AI exposure across GL, Tech E&O, cyber, EPLI, and D&O — coverage lines whose policies contain no AI language. CFC responded in late June with affirmative AI coverage across seven product lines. That is the governance doorway — a real conversation to have with commercial clients this quarter.
The operations doorway opened at the same time. Vertafore Velocity AI and ReferenceConnect AI are live inside AMS360, answering producer questions across 75-plus publishers and 1 million-plus verified documents up to 80 percent faster. Applied Recon is running at 140-plus agencies, with early adopters reporting 8-plus hours saved per week per finance team. SIAA endorsed Momentum AMP across all 5,200-plus member agencies writing $18 billion-plus in premium. Bevaya launched its InsurGPT-powered agent platform for carriers, brokers, and TPAs. Producerflow launched its Partner Portal on June 3 for 50-state producer compliance. Quandri's inaugural P&C Index — 125,000-plus paired renewals across nearly 50 US brokerages — clocked the median homeowner renewal increase falling from roughly 13 percent to roughly 6 percent. Pace closed $46 million Series B co-led by Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital to deploy autonomous carrier operations. ZVOX launched insurance-focused AI lead routing on June 10. And roughly 95 percent of Q1 2026 InsurTech funding ($1.63 billion, per Gallagher Re) flowed to AI-focused firms.
Michael's closing frame, in his own words: this is not the time to think about AI as a tool. It's time to think about AI as a system. Leadership and governance. Front of the house — attraction, conversion, retention. Back of the house — efficiency that also delivers superior customer experience. An agency that operates itself and grows itself.
The full read is the episode.

Three AI moves landed in insurance inside a two-week window: Mount launched May 22 as a new AI-agent liability carrier, Klaimee positioned as the first AI-agent E&O in early May, and Kinro launched June 21 as the first autonomous brokerage — licensed in 30 states, appointed with 15 carriers, in three weeks. The Evident AI Index just clocked agentic AI in insurer use cases moving from 1-in-20 to 1-in-4 in six months. Corgi doubled its valuation to $2.6 billion. Manulife booked $300 million in AI-generated value at year-end 2025, targeting $1 billion-plus by 2027.
Michael Jans calls this the fastest AI-in-insurance week the channel has seen.
This episode is a fast, punchy read on all nine movers — plus the Cake and Arrow agent-side research, the CRC Specialty piece on the ISO CG 40 47 and CG 40 48 coverage gap, and Vitali Yurkevich in Carrier Management on the operator-side reality of AI inside an agency.
Michael sorts the whole slate into six buckets an independent principal can use starting Monday: CONSIDER (for the agency's own operation), SELL (as a product), CARRIER (breaking on the carrier side), AI CARRIER (emerging entrants), CONSUME (read or listen), and WATCH LIST (outside players aimed at the channel).
The one-line thesis, in Michael's own words: AI is presenting a huge threat to your commercial-lines clients, a huge opportunity for you. Who is the authority here? Who is the one who identifies problems and solves them? That is supposed to be you. That is the strength of the independent agency system.
The pun is the episode's reason for being — AI for the IA. Mirror images. Artificial intelligence for the independent insurance agent. And a short window to be the one who names it before the client, the carrier, or the AI does.
The full six-bucket read is the episode.

Last month, State Farm flew 19,000 sales agents to Allegiant Stadium and the CEO, Jon Farney, told them their contracts were being torn up. Pink performed. Jimmy Fallon ran a sing-along. Then the bombshell. New comp. New benchmarks. A buyout window with a hard September deadline. And underneath all of it, the AI productivity math the carrier ran on its own channel.
Michael Jans calls it the most important U.S. insurance and AI story of 2026 so far. Not because of State Farm. Because of what one captive carrier's move tells the independent agency channel about the next 24 months.
This episode is a sober, peer-to-peer read on what happened, why the math forced it, and what an independent principal owns about it right now. Michael's response runs in three moves: govern the AI install, light AI fires in the front of the house, and right-size the back of the house.
In this episode:
The Las Vegas convention scene that set up the bombshell
The moment the CEO walked on stage and told 19,000 agents their contracts were being rewritten
Why this is the most important U.S. insurance and AI story of 2026
The "captive went first" thesis and what is now sitting on every carrier's desk
The 8 contract changes, line by line
The internal-memo line: "We have a finite window to change"
The State Farm AI stack (Navi, Household Story, Auto FNOL) and the 2028 productivity math
The buyout math: a $700,000 book worth $1.4 to $2.4 million on the open market, with the buyout capped at $300,000
What this signals for carrier appetite, buyers of agencies, and PE
The three moves an independent principal owns right now: governance, front of office, back of office
Why this is not a "new AI tool" story — it is a channel-restructuring story
Sober, not panic: how to lead the agency through this
The full three-move response is the episode.

Artificial Intelligence is no longer a future issue.
It's now an insurance issue.
In this episode, Michael Jans reveals a little-known development that could have major implications for commercial insurance agencies and their clients: new AI-related endorsements and exclusions that are quietly appearing in the marketplace.
You'll discover:
What changed on January 1, 2026
The AI endorsements most agencies haven't reviewed
Why commercial clients may have coverage gaps they don't know about
Potential E&O implications for agencies
How forward-thinking agencies can become trusted advisors on this rapidly emerging risk
Michael also introduces a free resource designed to help agencies stay ahead of AI-related developments and avoid being the last to know.
If you write commercial insurance, this is an episode you cannot afford to ignore.
Free resource: AIBriefingRoom.com

In this episode of AI for IA, Michael Jans breaks down what may become the defining strategic divide in the independent insurance industry:
the difference between agencies that casually “experiment” with AI…
and agencies that systematically build growth, efficiency, governance, and valuation advantage around it.
Michael shares:
Why AI adoption in the industry is still shockingly immature
The hidden risks of “shadow AI” inside agencies
What carriers and regulators are increasingly watching
The 5-level AI Maturity Model for independent agencies
Why the biggest AI opportunity is NOT in the back office
How AI-driven agencies may achieve higher margins, faster growth, and stronger valuation
The emerging concept of the “Self-Operating, Self-Growing Agency”
He also introduces a new AI Readiness Diagnostic designed specifically for independent agency principals who want clarity, confidence, and a practical roadmap for responsible AI implementation. readiness-check.aigrowthacademy.insure
If you’re an agency owner wondering:
“Where do we actually stand with AI?”
…this episode is for you.

Most agencies think growth problems start with lead generation.
But what if the real bottleneck is hidden inside renewal servicing?
In this episode, Michael Jans sits down with Colby Tunick of Refocus AI to explore how AI is beginning to compress renewal workflows from 90 minutes to 15 — and why that shift could fundamentally change staffing, margins, retention, and valuation inside the independent agency channel.
A conversation about AI, operational leverage, and the future economics of the independent insurance agency.
📞 Contact Information
📱 https://www.linkedin.com/in/colby-tunick/
🌐 Website: https://www.refocusai.com/

Most agencies are using AI the wrong way.
Not as execution… but as assistance.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Isaiah Hall, co-founder of Circle, about a new approach:
AI that can complete insurance workflows end-to-end.
From a single client request, it can:
Access your AMS
Navigate carrier portals
Retrieve documents
Draft the response
All with human review at the final step.
The real question isn’t the tool.
It’s this:
👉 What happens when one employee can do the work of three?
If you’re thinking about growth, staffing, or valuation…
This is a conversation you need to hear.
🔗 Links
https://www.usecircle.com/