Days after announcing a deal to equip 10,000 engineers and data scientists at Travelers with AI assistants, the insurance company’s leader detailed “different
iating domain expertise” around data and technology, which fuel long-term profit growth for the insurer.
Travelers Chief Executive Officer Alan Schnitzer told investment analysts that more than 20,000 Travelers professionals already “use AI tools on a regular basis” d
uring a fourth-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. He also said that the company’s claims call centers are getting leaner with automation tools providing an efficiency boost.
After he summarized drivers of 20% growth in fourth-quarter net income and 26% jump for the full year, and before referencing the new partnership with Anthropi
c to bring 10,000 personalized AI agents onboard to expand the carrier’s AI-enabled engineering and analytics capabilities, Schnitzer offered an overview of a decade of profit gains fueled by a technology and innovation strategy.
Among other things, Schnitzer said that net written premiums grew nearly 7 percent per year, on average, between 2016 and 2025, while the underlying combined ra
tio (excluding catastrophe losses and prior-year development) dropped nearly 8 points to 83.9.
“Notwithstanding a significant increase in our technology spending, that improvement in underlying profitability includes a 3-point or 10% improvement in our expen
se ratio,” he said, later revealing that actual investment dollars for AI and other tech initiatives tot
aling $1.5 billion. A slide displayed as he spoke indicated that the expense ratio dropped three points—to 28.5 in 2025, compared to 31.5 in 2016—in spite of the investments.
“As a consequence of all that, compared to 10 years ago, our underlying underwriting income is more than 4-times what it had been,” he stated.
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Offering a particular example of efficiencies gained through automation, Schnitzer sai
d that Travelers “claim call center population is down by a third,” adding that the company will also be consolidating four claim call centers down to two this year.
“It’s worth pointing out that the efficiency gains in our claim organization come through loss adjustment expense, benefiting the loss ratio,” he stated, noting th
at the Travelers claims organization has benefited from investments in automation, straight-through processing and analytics that “refine indemnity payouts and drive operational efficiencies.”
Schnitzer reported that more than half of all claims to Travelers are now eligible for straight-through processing, and that customers actually adopt straight-through processing about two-thirds of the time.
“Another 15% of all claims are processed with advanced digital tools. All of those percentages are growing,” he said.
The Travelers CEO did note, however, that there are customers who still want to call Travelers to report their claims. To accommodate them, Travelers launched a natural language generative AI voice agent that takes first notice of loss by phone just last week. “Early customer adoption is exceeding our expectation,” he stated.
At one point, Schnitzer noted that Travelers handled 1.5 million claims in 2025—”about one every 20 seconds”—making claim payments of more than $23 billion while meeting a goal of closing 90% of catastrophe claims within 30 days.