Georgia-headquartered Oakbridge Insurance, one the largest privately owned brokerages, announced that longtime president and CEO Robbie Smith will be executive chairman, starting July 1.
Matt James, the current chief financial officer and chief acquisition officer, will be named CEO. Trae Vaughn, previously the managing director of the brokerage, will take on the role of president, the company said this week.
“The vision and mission of Oakbridge remain unchanged,” James said in a news release. “We are doubling down on what has made us successful: a broadly aligned employee-centric model that empowers both the current and next generation of talent.”
Oakbridge, with offices in Alpharetta, Georgia, was founded in 2020 and has expanded steadily through acquisitions and partnerships with insurance agencies and brokerages around the Southeast. It has focused on commercial coverage, personal lines, employee benefits, surety and life and health coverage.
James has been with Oakbridge since 2020 and has overseen much of the merger and acquisition efforts. Before that, he worked with Prime Risk Partners and led his own M&A advisory firm. He earned his master of business administration degree from the Yale School of Management.
Vaughn has been a producer and sales leader and will continue the company’s producer-centered focus, the firm noted. He was previously with Brock Insurance Agency and with Travelers Insurance.
A new report out from Sedgwick, “Future-ready property claims: Leveraging technology and AI for a strategic advantage,” estimates that between 58% and 82% of insurers use AI tools in their operations, but just 12% say they have fully mature AI capabilities and only 7% say they have achieved scalable AI success.
The report paints a picture of accelerating AI adoption in the industry, but with carriers at vastly different points in the process: some are still dabbling and experimenting, while others are scaling AI across operations.
David Guaragna, managing director, Sedgwick Property Americas, explained the dichotomy.
“People look at insurance claims as a monolith, and if you think about it, different carriers specialize in different lines, and there’s just so much complexity across the insurance space,” Guaragna said. “And if you look at that different complexity, the data associated with those different lines is extremely challenging and it’s approached different ways. So, to think that everyone’s going to move at the same speed and the different processes with which they collect that data and the different systems involved–whether it be the property space requiring estimates, in the auto space requiring different estimating platforms–they’re relying on different partners and different systems. I do think that they’re going to move at different speeds based on the need for that data.”
