Insurance brokering industry is a highly competitive industry that puts pressure on producers and brokerage leaders. Clients expect faster response times, carriers demand greater accuracy, and the sheer volume of administrative work continues to grow. At the same time, the labor market remains tight, making it difficult for brokerages to hire enough skilled staff to keep up with demand.

Against that backdrop, artificial intelligence has emerged as a potential solution — but for many brokerage leaders, the question is not whether to adopt AI, but which kind of AI will actually deliver results in the complex, regulation-heavy world of insurance.

“Our focus has always been on building AI that’s deeply embedded in how insurance brokerages actually operate — not just generic tools, but solutions that understand the complexity of their workflows and remove friction from the day-to-day,” said Sambhav Ananda, Co-founder and Chief Technology officer for Fulcrum.

Fulcrum has developed an AI-enabled platform designed specifically for insurance brokerage operations, addressing the daily workflow challenges that consume significant staff time and introduce risk across the policy lifecycle. The platform’s approach centers on a distinction that Anand said is critical for brokerages to understand before investing in any AI solution: the difference between vertical and horizontal AI.

Why Vertical AI Outperforms General-Purpose Tools in Insurance

Sambhav Ananda, Co-founder and Chief Technology officer, Fulcrum

Horizontal AI refers to broad, general-purpose artificial intelligence tools — the kind that can draft an email, summarize a document or answer a wide range of questions across many industries. These tools have their place, but they are not purpose-built for any single domain.

Vertical AI, by contrast, is designed and trained for a specific industry. It understands the terminology, the workflows, the document types and the regulatory requirements unique to that field.

Insurance operations involve highly specialized documents — applications, policy forms, endorsements, certificates of insurance, loss runs and more. A general-purpose AI tool may be able to read those documents, but it often isn’t designed to produce the specific outputs brokers need or integrate seamlessly with agency management systems. Without those tailored outputs and integrations, teams still face manual work to validate, reform at and enter information into their core systems.

Vertical AI platforms like Fulcrum’s are designed around broker-specific workflows, outputs and system integrations. Rather than stopping at document understanding, they are built to map directly to how brokerages already operate — producing the right data in the right format and pushing it into the right systems without additional manual steps.

For brokerages evaluating AI investments, this distinction matters because adopting the wrong type of tool can lead to frustration, low adoption among staff and ultimately wasted resources. The specificity of vertical AI means it can be deployed into real workflows more quickly and with less manual oversight.

“If I were to characterize the really core differentiators from a horizontal solution, it’s that the outputs are not a fit for purpose or tailored to an insurance context,” said Lexie Tonelli, head of strategy and operations for Fulcrum.

Elevating the Client Experience Through Faster, More Consistent Service

One of the most immediate impacts brokerages can realize from a purpose-built AI platform is a tangible improvement in customer service. In an industry where client retention is directly tied to responsiveness and accuracy, the ability to handle routine requests faster and with fewer errors can be a significant competitive advantage.

Lexie Tonelli, Head of Strategy and Operations, Fulcrum

Brokerage staff often spend a substantial portion of their day on repetitive administrative tasks — processing certificates, checking policy details, responding to standard client inquiries and manually entering data across systems. These are necessary tasks, but they consume time that could otherwise be spent on higher-value activities like advising clients, identifying coverage gaps or building relationships.

Fulcrum’s platform automates many of these routine processes, handling tasks like certificate issuance, policy checking and data extraction without requiring manual intervention for every transaction. When a client calls with a straightforward request, the turnaround time can shrink from hours or even days to minutes.

“We work very closely with some of the largest customers in the space,” Anand said.

“We have 20 of the top 50 brokers as existing customers. We work with them to really understand and map out their workflows, their ways of operating, into the Fulcrum platform.”

A quick, actionable response translates directly to client satisfaction. In a market where brokerages often compete not on price but on service quality, the ability to respond quickly and accurately can be the deciding factor in whether a client renews or shops their coverage elsewhere.

Beyond speed, consistency is another area where AI-driven workflows improve the client experience. When processes are automated, the same standard of accuracy and completeness is applied every time, regardless of which staff member is handling the account or how busy the office happens to be on a given day.

Four Payoffs That Make the Case for AI Adoption

For brokerage principals weighing the decision to adopt an AI-enabled platform, Fulcrum pointed to four key areas where its platform delivers measurable returns.

Time saved. The most immediate and visible benefit is the recovery of staff time.

“We’re taking a proposal from eight-plus hours down to a one-hour exercise and taking a policy check from two-plus weeks of waiting on business processing outsourcing plus an hour of review down to a fifteen minute end-to-end exercise,” Tonelli said.

Client experience. As noted, faster and more consistent service leads to stronger client relationships. When clients feel well-served, they are more likely to consolidate their coverage with a single broker, refer colleagues and renew without shopping the market. The downstream effect on retention and organic growth can be substantial.

“We’re improving policy delivery turnaround time to be same day rather than two-plus weeks,” Tonelli said.

“Another example I hear about a lot is brokerages using Fulcrum’s tools to respond in a better, more tailored to customers; helping them generate e-mails or analyze a claim scenario,” she added.

Reduction of exposure to errors. Manual processes inevitably introduce the risk of human error — a mistyped limit, a missed endorsement, an outdated certificate sent to the wrong party. In insurance, errors can carry serious consequences, from coverage disputes to E&O claims. By automating data extraction, validation and document generation, AI significantly reduces the surface area for mistakes.

“A lot of people who weren’t outsourcing policy checking prior, were your account managers really doing it? I’m not so sure, so we’re reducing risk from that perspective,” Tonelli said.

Revenue lift. The combination of time savings, improved client retention and reduced errors creates the conditions for revenue growth. Staff who are freed from administrative work have more bandwidth to cross-sell, identify coverage gaps and pursue new business opportunities. Clients who receive exceptional service are more likely to expand their relationship with the brokerage. And fewer errors mean fewer costly remediation efforts that eat into margins.

“If your brokers can cover a bigger book of business, if they’re able to respond faster to a new prospect or on a remarket, ultimately you’re seeing signs of starting to win more business. I think it’s really helping them from a competitive standpoint,” Tonelli said.

Together, these four payoffs represent a compelling business case — not just for technology adoption in the abstract, but for the specific kind of purpose-built, insurance-focused AI that can integrate into existing brokerage workflows without disrupting the way teams already operate.

Looking ahead, Anand said the brokerages that embrace vertical AI now will be the ones best positioned to compete as client expectations continue to rise and the talent market remains challenging.

For brokerage leaders ready to explore what AI can do for their operations, the potential gains in efficiency, service quality and profitability are significant, as Fulcrum’s leadership attests.

“What we’re enabling brokers to do is to serve their clients faster and with better results,” Anand said.

“It’s more around helping brokers generate proposals a lot faster so that they can get back to their clients. It’s a lot about helping them do policy checks a lot faster so that their clients can get their policies sooner rather than later.”

To learn more, visit https://www.withfulcrum.com

This article was produced by the R&I Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising department of Risk & Insurance, in collaboration with Fulcrum. The editorial staff of Risk & Insurance had no role in its preparation.