This blog post is part of a series covering the five pillars of the Intelligent Insurer Operating Model. Click the links here to read the first, second, and third posts in the series.
When talking with insurers about the Intelligent Insurer Operating Model and using agentic AI, I use a phrase that I want to be direct about, because it applies to some genuinely impressive work being done right now in our industry: repaving the cow path. Take an old, inefficient process, digitize it exactly as it exists, and call that a transformation. The technology is new. The cow path is not.
The cow path was not designed. It was created by cattle wandering where the terrain was easiest. When you build a highway, you do not follow the cow path. You re-examine the geography and design for where you actually need to go.
The Honest Case of Jointly AI Broker
I have genuine admiration for Jointly AI Broker. What its team built is remarkable. But I also think the most honest thing I can say about it—and the most useful thing for the leaders in this industry—is that in one important way, it repaved the cow path. It took the existing manual process of calling carriers and waiting on hold and automated it. The AI navigates touch-tone menus, speaks with human representatives, waits on hold, and negotiates quotes. It follows, with impressive fidelity, the workflow a human agent currently uses.
This is not a criticism of Jointly. It is a signal of what comes next. Someone will soon repath the entire mountain. They will not have AI making phone calls to humans; they will have AI talking directly to AI, bypassing the hold music altogether. The analog scaffolding that Jointly navigates so impressively will simply cease to exist. In mouse years, that next leap is not a decade away.
Redefining the Work, Not Just the Worker
True transformation requires re-examining job functions at every level of the organization. The constraints that shaped insurance workflows—geography, business hours, human processing speed, the need for physical forms—no longer apply in the same way. I ask executives this question: if you designed this process from scratch, with unlimited digital workers available and none of the legacy constraints, what would it look like? That gap between your current state and that answer is your transformation roadmap.
This work requires both sides of the house, and I want to be clear that the change management challenge here is significant. Reimagining job functions is not a technology project—it is an organizational redesign that affects how people understand their own roles and value. Business leaders know where the friction lives. Technology leaders know what AI can do today. And the people doing the work today know things neither side fully appreciates. The organizations that get Pillar Three right bring all three groups into the room.
Where to Start
My recommendation: Ask your frontline staff to identify one step in their daily routine that exists solely because “the system requires it.” That step is your first target for a “re-pathing” project.
Discuss the Intelligent Insurer Operating Model in person! Join us on May 21st in Chicago at our Regional Property Casualty Insurance Forum on Agentic AI or on June 16th in Des Moines for our Regional Life Insurance, Annuities, and Group Benefits Forum on Agentic AI. Designed for senior technology, operations, strategy, data, analytics, and line of business leaders, these forums explore how AI-driven intelligence is being embedded across underwriting, new business, policy administration, claims, enrollment, and customer servicing and feature numerous innovative service providers implementing agentic AI in production.
Next: Pillar Four—why transformation requires a new kind of partnership between the C-suite and IT, and what that looks like in practice.
