From Generative to Agentic AI – Why P&C Insurance Must Evolve Its AI Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping industries, and insurance is no exception. However, despite widespread experimentation, most property and casualty (P&C) insurers remain at the foundational level of AI maturity. According to Roots, 70% of insurers have AI initiatives underway, but only 22% have scaled beyond the pilot phase. Most efforts center around GenAI use cases like document summarization, email drafting, or virtual assistants. These are tactical wins, not strategic transformations. 

The Limitation of Foundational GenAI in Insurance 

While GenAI (generative AI) has gained tremendous attention across the insurance industry, its actual implementation often remains narrow in scope. For example, most property and casualty insurers use GenAI for customer service chatbots, document extraction, and simple content generation. These tools undoubtedly create efficiencies, particularly by automating low-complexity tasks and reducing administrative burden. However, the benefits are often incremental. 

The core issue is that foundational GenAI is inherently reactive and bounded, meaning it responds to a prompt but lacks the ability to initiate actions, maintain memory across interactions, or execute complex workflows. These tools may answer a policyholder’s question or summarize a claims document, but they don’t understand the broader business context in which these tasks occur. As a result, they function as isolated support tools rather than integral contributors to strategic goals. This limits GenAI’s ability to deliver lasting transformation in the insurance operating model. 

The Urgency to Evolve 

Insurers now find themselves at a critical crossroads. They face rising claim severity due to an increase in catastrophic weather events and higher repair and replacement costs, growing customer demand for instant, digital-first experiences, and talent shortages that are pushing teams to their limits. At the same time, insurtechs and ecosystem competitors are rapidly increasing the pace of innovation, leveraging AI not as a tool, but as an architecture. 

To compete effectively in this evolving landscape, insurers must accelerate their AI maturity. Sticking with GenAI alone risks entrenching legacy inefficiencies in slightly faster ways. What’s needed is a systemic shift: one that reimagines how decisions are made, how work flows across the organization, and how insurers adapt in real time to policyholder needs, regulatory demands, and market opportunities. 

Forward-looking insurers are no longer asking, “Where can we try AI?” Instead, they’re asking, “How can we reengineer our operations around AI as a core capability?” This shift in mindset, supported by leadership vision, responsible governance, and strategic partnerships, is what separates AI experimenters from AI leaders. 

Introducing Agentic AI in Insurance 

Agentic AI represents this shift. Unlike GenAI, which is reactive and relies on discrete prompts, Agentic AI enables a persistent, proactive, and goal-oriented approach to automation and intelligence. These AI agents are built to: 

• Understand business goals and adjust actions accordingly 
• Operate across multiple steps, systems, and timeframes 
• Respond to new information and unexpected outcomes dynamically 
• Collaborate with human experts through well-defined feedback loops 
• Autonomously take action within the guidelines granted to it 

Think of an AI agent not as a task bot, but as a digital teammate capable of handling underwriting intake, proactively following up on incomplete submissions, triaging claims based on loss severity and policy language, or even preparing compliance-ready documentation across jurisdictions. 

Crucially, Agentic AI maintains contextual awareness. It doesn’t just answer a question or complete a task; it understands why that task matters in the broader workflow. This unlocks entirely new possibilities for transformation in areas like underwriting, claims management, policy servicing, operations, and beyond. 

AI as a Strategic Insurance Business Capability 

Embracing Agentic AI is not about layering another tool onto an already crowded tech stack. It’s about embedding intelligence into the very fabric of insurance operations. When thoughtfully implemented, Agentic AI becomes a force multiplier that: 

• Reduces dependence on manual processes and fragmented systems 
• Accelerates time-to-decision without sacrificing quality or compliance 
• Brings transparency and consistency to underwriting and claims decisions 
• Enhances customer satisfaction by making service faster, smarter, and highly personalized 

This is where the role of a trusted modernization partner becomes essential. At Sikich, we help P&C insurers operationalize AI by guiding them beyond the experimentation phase. We connect the strategic vision to hands-on execution, enabling organizations to modernize their workflows without losing control of compliance, data integrity, or customer trust. 

Our expertise spans every point on the AI maturity curve, from building pilots that deliver measurable ROI to scaling agentic workflows across underwriting, claims, and customer engagement. We collaborate with insurers to design AI strategies that are not just technically sound, but aligned with regulatory requirements, business objectives, and workforce realities. 

Drive Modern Insurance with Agentic AI Expertise 

More than just a technology upgrade, Agentic AI allows insurers to reimagine their business processes with intelligence at the core, resulting in a more adaptive, efficient, and customer-focused enterprise. The competitive advantage in insurance will no longer go to those with the most AI tools, but to those who use AI to rethink how work is done and how value is delivered. 

It’s time to shift from GenAI experimentation to Agentic execution. Lead your organization into this next phase by connecting with Sikich’s insurance and AI experts. We’ll help you build a roadmap for AI adoption that drives real business transformation and positions you to lead in a digital-first insurance future.