New CEO Positions Applied as Industry’s AI Transformation Partner

• By: Will Jones
• October 1, 2026

New Applied Systems CEO Graham Blackwell pledged to make the company the insurance industry’s “AI transformation partner” as he outlined his vision for the InsurTech’s next chapter at Applied Net 2026 this week in Washington, D.C.

Former CEO Taylor Rhodes, who will now become vice chair, led Applied from 2019 through 2026, a period that was marked by growth, acquisitions, investment in artificial intelligence (AI), modernizing core products and advancing the digital roundtrip of insurance strategy. He opened Tuesday’s keynote by thanking customers, partners and employees for their support during his tenure as CEO.

“I am immensely proud of the people that I’ve gotten to work with and humbled by the things that we’ve done together. And the most important part of my time at Applied has been you,” Rhodes told attendees. “It’s been the clients and partners and my teammates who have allowed me to come and join for a brief period of time and hopefully get some good things done.”

“It’s been one of the greatest honors of my life to serve this great industry for over seven years,” he added. “I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to play a small part in the history of one of the world’s most exciting and critical industries.”

Rhodes then introduced Blackwell as the new CEO, who he said “is exactly the right leader at the right time for Applied and for the broader insurance ecosystem.”

“Graham is incredibly smart. He’s hardworking. He’s visionary, but he’s practical. He’s deeply caring and a great person,” Rhodes said. “That’s a powerful combination.”

Since joining Applied in 2020, Blackwell has been a driving force behind the company’s long-term growth strategy, including the acquisition of EZLynx, the launch of Applied Pay and its expansion into broader Financial Management, a strengthened investment in benefits, the integration strategy of Applied and Ivans, and the acquisitions of Planck and Cytora.

Before Applied, Blackwell served as chief operating officer at SMS Assist, where he led the company’s sales, marketing and strategy organizations. Before that, he spent nearly eight years as an executive vice president on Bain Capital’s North American Private Equity operating team, partnering with boards and management teams to drive enterprise-wide transformation across the technology sector.

Under Blackwell’s leadership, Applied is “going to seize the transformative technology of the day,” he said. “We are going to do whatever it takes, and we are going to be your AI transformation partner—and the industry’s partner—in taking this incredible technology and applying it to transform how you work, how your business operates and how the industry collaborates.”

During the conference, Applied launched Epic Conductor™, a new AI platform built natively into Applied Epic®. The launch represents a pivotal moment in Epic’s evolution from a system of record into a system of action—automating operational, policy, financial and submission management workflows to drive significant cost savings and top-line premium growth.

Epic Conductor addresses a long-standing industry problem: inefficient manual systems limit agencies’ growth and increase risk exposure. Created to eliminate that friction, Epic Conductor is the AI automation platform built directly into Applied Epic that conducts work end to end across the policy lifecycle instead of task by task.

“Many of the AI solutions available today are features solving a narrow use case, not connecting work across the whole policy lifecycle,” said Lance Williams, chief product officer, Applied.

“Our ambition is to apply AI to do what nobody else can: connect the work that moves from operations to finance and trading teams and out to carriers all in one connected system, removing the friction that stalls it to drive real business outcomes faster,” Williams said. “That’s what Epic Conductor does, conducting the work itself, so agencies and brokerages get the time back to serve clients and grow.”

Nine of the top 10 largest brokers ranked by Business Insurance in 2026 now rely on an Applied agency management system, up from eight in 2025, while 76 of Insurance Journal’s Top 100 Property/Casualty Agencies do the same, up from 67 in 2025.

Will Jones is IA editor-in-chief.