Independent Agents Are Past AI Hype—Now Comes the Hard Part

• July 15, 2026

By Kasey Connors

Halfway through 2026, the questions independent insurance agents were asking about artificial intelligence (AI) changed. It used to be “What is this?” Now it’s “What does this actually do to my workflow, and where does it put my errors & omissions exposure?”

This shift was central in a recent Vertafore webinar I joined with Doug Mohr, vice president of industry relationships and partnership at Vertafore, and James Tom, chief product officer, Vertafore. At the midpoint of the year, we sat down to take stock based on the findings of Vertafore’s “2026 Agency Technology and Growth Outlook Report.”

Here are four takeaways from the webinar about where AI stands in the independent agency channel, and what agents need to do next:

1) Adoption is real, but it’s lopsided. About one-third of agencies are actively using AI today, another third are experimenting and approximately 39% are still spending 2026 exploring use cases rather than putting anything into production, according to Vertafore’s report.

Only 8% have truly embedded AI in their daily workflow, according to the 2026 Big “I” Agents Council for Technology (ACT) “2026 Trends Report.” Larger agencies are investing well ahead of smaller ones right now, though that gap should close as implementation gets cheaper.

2) Returns are everyday wins. The agencies that are seeing results aren’t doing anything flashy. They’re pointing AI at the high-volume, repetitive work that eats up a day: policy checking, call note summaries, drafting client communications, email processing and commission statement automation.

One example is from the 2025 Best Practices Study from the Big “I” and Reagan Consulting, which reported that an agency saved 30 minutes per staff member per day on policy checking, resulting in real ROI across a multi-person team. That’s not transformation, that’s arithmetic. It’s the kind of case that gets a skeptical principal to say yes to AI.

3) The gap isn’t technology, it’s integration. Most agencies are not under-investing in tools. They’re under-integrating them. A tool that sits outside the daily workflow gets forgotten, no matter how good it is. The agencies that are pulling ahead start with the workflow problem and go and find the technology to solve it, not the other way around.

Only about 25% of agencies are actively using their own data to make strategic decisions, according to the 2024 Agency Universe Study—that’s the real story underneath the AI conversation. Clean data enables segmentation, segmentation enables cross-selling and cross-selling drives revenue. Poor quality data blocks every one of those steps, regardless of the AI’s capabilities.

Vertafore’s recent report on policyholder expectations backs this up from the client side: Only 1 in 5 policyholders (21%) say they receive proactive updates or outreach from their agent. If your outreach still relies on spreadsheets and one-off emails rather than a structured system, the gap in the relationship will show.

4) Clients notice the relationship gap and are less patient. As the market stabilizes after several hard years and buyers return to the market, expectations are rising. Clients have little tolerance for repeated questions, sluggish follow-up or disconnected communication.

About 30% of consumers only think about their insurance once a year or at a major life event, according to the Big “I” and Trusted Choice® consumer survey conducted earlier this year. That means the agency has to be the one to reach out first, rather than waiting for the renewal call to prompt it.

There’s a caution flag here, too. Sending clients too many semi-personalized, AI-generated communications can damage a relationship faster than saying nothing at all. A personal touch still beats volume.

Additionally, Vertafore’s policyholder expectations report notes that speed matters at the front end of that relationship: 83% of policyholders expect a response within one business day, and 35% expect a reply within one hour. Fast, accurate quoting isn’t a nice-to-have anymore; it’s table stakes for winning the business in the first place.

Agencies don’t need a five-year AI roadmap right now. What they need is smaller than that. The need to pick one workflow, identify two manual steps within it, and automate them.

They also need to start writing down the institutional knowledge that currently lives only in your longest-tenured employees’ heads, even if that just means putting it in a shared document. Roughly 20% of agency principals are over 55, according to the 2024 Agency Universe Study. The issue goes beyond perpetuation—it’s a question of whether knowledge survives the people currently holding it.

That’s the work ahead for the second half of the year, and it’s a lot less glamorous than the AI headlines make it sound.

Kasey Connors is the executive director for the Big “I” Agents Council for Technology (ACT).