Artificial intelligence technology has continued to evolve, and it’s affecting many areas of insurance from claims to underwriti
ng to customer service, according to panelists at the 2025 PLUS D&O Symposium in New York City.
But has the technology developed so much that it could replace human underwriting in the next five years?
“I think it is the biggest question out there,” said Jeffrey Chivers, CEO and co-f
ounder of Syllo, an AI-powered litigation workspace that enables lawyers and paralegals to use language models throughout the litigation life cycle.
Another way of asking this question is whether AI can develop judgment, not ju
st in underwriting but across all business domains in which judgment is an essential part of the job, he said.
“Is there any change here with respect to a model’s ability to exercise the kind of nuanced value judgment and other types of jud
gments that go into a mission critical job?” he asked. “Thus far, the answer for m
e has been no,” he said. “If the answer is yes at some time in the next five years, I think that’s what changes everything.”
Claire Davey, head of product innovation at Relm Insurance, said th
at major shifts are already happening in other areas of insurance that involve more administrative tasks, however.
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“It depends on how the organization wants to deploy [AI] and utilize it,” she said. “But I think many jobs, particularly those tha
t are administrative, are at risk of being phenomenally changed by artificial intelligence technology. It is going to be a landmark shift in com
merce that we’ve seen in a generation, and insurance is no different.”
That said, she agreed that underwriting jobs are safe, for now.
“One of the key governance controls and duties with AI technology is that it does require human oversight, so while AI could perform some underwriting stages, you would hope tha
t there is still a human reviewing its output and sense-checking that,” she said.
AI’s Underwriting Judgment
AI technology is having a material impact on the insurance industry in other ways, panelists agreed. To start, the litigation landscape is already seeing a transformation.
Within five years, there will be a lot more adoption of generative AI across legal and compliance functions, Chivers predicted. “And I think five years from now, a couple of things will be really prominent.”
He said much debate will continue to emerge around transparency and any red flags discovered within an organization due to AI.
“Do you attribute knowledge to management if you had an AI agent in the background that surfaced these various red flags or yellow flags even if nobody reviewed it?” he said. “I think the transparency that generative AI brings within a big organization is going to be a big subject of discovery litigation.”
He added another area to watch is the degree to which companies are handing off decision-making responsibilities to AI.
