The Insurance Brokerage Sector’s Path to Digital Transformation | Floapi

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The Hidden Cost of Manual Work in the Insurance Industry

Across the insurance industry, highly skilled professionals dedicate a significant portion of their time to tasks that are manual, repetitive, and administrative. These include re-entering policy data across multiple systems, recompiling quotes manually, and performing routine policy checks that could be automated. Such work consumes resources without directly contributing to client service or strategic decision-making.

Industry research indicates that underwriters spend approximately 30 to 40 percent of their working hours on non-value-adding administrative tasks such as re-keying data and conducting manual analyses. This represents nearly two full working days each week diverted away from core responsibilities.

The economic implications are considerable. Accenture estimates that inefficiencies in underwriting and claims could result in productivity losses valued at 160 billion USD over the next five years, with as much as 170 billion USD in premiums at risk due to operational shortcomings and suboptimal customer experiences.

Surveys at the agency level reflect a similar concern.

In Vertafore’s recent study of nearly 2,000 insurance professionals, automating repetitive tasks and data entry ranked among the most desired technological improvements to support daily operations and improve efficiency.

These findings underscore a systemic challenge. Outdated, manual workflows continue to absorb substantial time and capacity, preventing brokers, underwriters, and account managers from focusing on higher-value activities such as client advisory, strategic planning, and business development. Without targeted intervention, the resulting financial and operational costs will persist and, in many cases, escalate.

Technologies Addressing Insurance Inefficiencies

To overcome the substantial challenges posed by manual and repetitive tasks, the insurance industry is increasingly turning to technological solutions centered around automation, robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI). Each of these technologies addresses different layers of operational complexity and offers a pathway toward greater efficiency and accuracy.

Automation refers to the use of software to execute routine, rule-based tasks without the need for human intervention. Typically, automations are scripts that run on dedicated hardware, selected according to the volume of work they must handle. To interact with systems such as a broker’s management system (BMS), these scripts generally require two key pieces of information: a private key and the system’s server address. With these credentials, a secure connection can be established. Once connected, the automation can perform actions like downloading documents, modifying policies, and retrieving data through the system’s Application Programming Interface (API). By utilizing the API’s capabilities, complex automated workflows can be built, including data extraction, process orchestration, and sending automated notifications. Automation not only reduces the risk of human error but also speeds up workflows, allowing professionals to focus on higher-value tasks.

Robotic Process Automation is a specialized form of automation that replicates repetitive, structured human actions across multiple software systems. RPA bots perform tasks such as logging into applications, copying and pasting data, and navigating user interfaces, all without requiring major changes to existing systems. These bots typically need more complex infrastructure to run and can be harder to scale, since each bot often requires its own credentials and license. RPA is especially useful when system APIs are limited or unavailable, serving as a practical solution to automate processes without deep integration.

Artificial Intelligence goes beyond rule-based automation by enabling systems to learn from data, recognize patterns, and make predictive or prescriptive decisions. AI applications in insurance include risk assessment, claims triage, and customer service personalization.

In Canada, several BMS are widely adopted by insurance brokers and agencies, including Applied Systems (Applied Epic), Vertafore AMS360, and PowerBroker. These platforms serve as central hubs for policy administration, client management, and carrier connectivity.

Bringing Automation to Life: How We at Floapi Transform Brokerage Operations

After exploring the challenges faced by insurance brokers and the technologies that promise to solve them, it is time to share how we at Floapi turn these innovations into real, impactful services tailored for the brokerage industry.

Our mission is to eliminate the repetitive, manual tasks that slow brokers down and distract from delivering exceptional client service. We focus on automating the workflows that consume the most time and introduce errors, helping brokerages operate more efficiently without disrupting their existing systems.

One of the core services we provide is commercial billing automation. When new business policies comes in or at renewal time, we automatically create billing transactions, generate invoices, and send them directly to clients, removing the need for manual data entry and follow-ups.

Another service that exploits the power of automation is our renewal validater. We ensure that policy information remains accurate and up to date by retrieving current policy data and send clients streamlined questionnaires to confirm or update details, preventing unnecessary or incorrect renewals.

With bots, we do have a requoter service, that goes beyond simply renewing policies. We run fresh, customized automobile quotes that align with each client’s preferences and risk profile, enabling brokers to present more competitive and personalized options. In this case, a bot would connect to the BMS just like a human, and perform a requoting via softwares like Applied Rating Services.

Finally, our intelligent note-taking solution captures and transcribes client phone calls, then summarizes key points into structured notes ready to be integrated into a BMS, reducing administrative workload and letting brokers be more focus on their actual conversations with their clients.

Automate Your Insurance Opertations with Floapi

At Floapi, we believe automation should amplify human expertise rather than replace it. By removing tedious manual work, we free brokers to concentrate on what truly matters: advising clients and growing their business.

If the services described in this article resonate with you or address a particular need, we invite you to visit the Floapi website and get in touch with us.