Most insurance professionals looking to adopt AI assume they need to buy something new. But in many cases, the best place to start is the software you already use.
This is the idea behind what AI Academy calls "Tier 1,” the first tier in a simple framework for navigating AI technology. Before evaluating any new vendor or searching for new tools, begin by exploring what AI capabilities are already built into the platforms you use today.
The advantages to finding and using existing AI in your systems are significant:
Think about it: If a system in your stack already solves 60 to 80% of a use case, why not start there? It’s faster, safer, and more scalable than buying something new.
An enormous number of insurance organizations already have AI capabilities embedded in their core systems. They're just underused because nobody has connected them to specific tasks.
These capabilities are already showing up in several areas:
Even AI agents, autonomous tools that can do consecutive tasks on their own, are showing up inside systems you might already be using.
On the carrier side, Guidewire's Underwriting Assistant, their first agentic AI capability, can automate submission intake, triage, and data enrichment so underwriters can spend their time on complex decisions. If your company already uses Guidewire, you may already have access to this.
On the agency side, Vertafore's Velocity AI agents are built right into the agency platform. One turns email activity into structured, actionable workflows. Another handles carrier statement reconciliation. And notice the design: the agent does the labor, but the professional stays in the loop to review and approve.
For example, a small independent agency using Vertafore, Google Workspace, and HubSpot mapped eight high-priority use cases to their existing tools. The results:
Out of all the high-priority tasks, only one — conversational intake — required looking beyond existing tools for a specialized solution.
Most of these use cases could be tackled today, with existing technology. Your company just might need to turn on a particular feature, check the capabilities within their current plan, or build a process for using these features in new ways.
So before you go shopping, go look at your policy admin system, your agency management system, your CRM. There might be AI capabilities sitting right in front of you.
Learn More at AI Academy
AI for Insurance provides a complete journey from strategic understanding to hands-on execution. The series begins by examining how AI is reshaping the traditional insurance model (from underwriting and claims to distribution and customer experience) and explores key forces accelerating industry-wide disruption. It then introduces AI-forward strategic shifts that define emerging AI-native insurance enterprise. From there, you will apply a practical, dual-framework system for identifying and prioritizing high-impact AI opportunities using both a bottom-up Use Case Model and a top-down Problem-Based Model.
The series culminates in a capstone focused on selecting and applying AI technologies using the Three Tiers of AI Technology framework, enabling you to turn strategy into action across your organization. A professional certificate is awarded on completion.