Insurance is bought the way people take out the bins: because it has to be done, not because anyone enjoys it. The products are close to interchangeable, the decision comes round every year, and the work is filling in the same answers again. Today that leaves AI little to add. Comparing prices is already solved, and the help people want from AI goes to the decisions that feel hard, such as pensions, investments, and debt.
Assistance is lowest exactly where delegation will be highest
Low use now is not a sign that AI will pass insurance by. It is the sign of where it will move fastest once it stops helping people decide and starts acting for them. A task nobody wants to do is the first one people are glad to hand over, and the review sets out how that hand-over happens: from the person doing the work with AI beside them, to AI doing the work with the person watching.
- L1Human as operator
- L2
- L3
- L4
- L5Human as observer
From customer experience to agent experience
When agents do the buying, the first visitor to an insurer's product is software, not a person. Distribution follows: products have to be readable by machines, quotable over an API, and safe to buy without the customer on the page. That is the shift Open is building for, with a product graph agents can read, and a safety harness that keeps the customer's own approval in the loop when the agent reaches the point of purchase.