Skip to main content

The L&A Hub

AI & Automation

Where AI is actually moving work in life and annuity — underwriting, servicing, distribution — and what adoption takes inside a carrier.

  1. AI Doesn't Know How to Do Your Job. You Do.
    S1E15
    37:08

    AI Doesn't Know How to Do Your Job. You Do.

    Jane Vevea spent 20 years in life insurance before anyone would have called her a tech person. She started at Prudential in 2006 running a retention call center, wholesaled through the bank channel at PNC, got laid off, and made a sharp left turn into insurtech. That detour took her through White Swan, then Atidot — where she was predicting lapses, surrenders, and upsell opportunities using AI before most carriers had even thought to ask the question — and now to xAI, where she works as a finance domain expert on large language models.

    Listen now →
  2. Who Owns the Workflow? The Organizational Problem AI Actually Exposes
    S1E13
    44:17

    Who Owns the Workflow? The Organizational Problem AI Actually Exposes

    Wei Chen is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Business and co-leader of the Digital Frontiers Initiative. His central argument: every serious conversation about AI and the workforce stops at the task level — which tasks AI can automate, which jobs are at risk. But tasks are only the bottom tier. The level that actually determines whether AI transforms an organization is the workflow: the connected chain of tasks that produces a business outcome. And the piece nobody's building is ownership — a named human who's accountable for the whole workflow, with the authority to stop it when something goes wrong.

    Listen now →
  3. "You Can't Just Slap AI On It" — Brian Poppe's Four-Phase Test for Carrier AI Adoption
    S1E11
    38:02

    "You Can't Just Slap AI On It" — Brian Poppe's Four-Phase Test for Carrier AI Adoption

    Brian Poppe — SVP of Life Insurance Solutions at Mutual of Omaha — has been an actuary, the entire innovation department, the Chief Data Officer, and now a P&L owner. In this episode he walks through his four-phase AI adoption framework, gives an honest read on where Mutual of Omaha actually sits (phases two and three), and explains why a memorial-book partnership he loved had to be killed because the timing of the offer was wrong.

    Listen now →
  4. The Robots Took the Easy Cases — What's Left for Human Underwriters
    S1E21
    43:02

    The Robots Took the Easy Cases — What's Left for Human Underwriters

    Frank Chechel — VP and Head of Individual Life Underwriting at Gen Re, and an actuary who fell into underwriting a decade ago building an R&D team — argues underwriting is only just scratching the surface after a hundred years. He and Paul trace how COVID turned accelerated underwriting from experiment into mandate overnight, why wellness programs went quiet and are now roaring back, and how to think about AI in three layers: predictive, generative, and the still-early agentic frontier. Frank is blunt about the limits: a summary that's 95% accurate is a good way to get fired, and the same case put in front of five underwriters yields five answers. The robots are taking the easy cases — which makes the human's job harder, not obsolete.

    Listen now →
  5. "A Garage Full of Mac Minis" — AI, Angel Investing, and the Next Wave of L&A Innovation
    S1E9
    42:27

    "A Garage Full of Mac Minis" — AI, Angel Investing, and the Next Wave of L&A Innovation

    James Wong built a massive IMO from scratch, sold it to a Fortune 500, and then launched The Founder's Chair — an insurance-focused angel investing platform that has funded 17 companies and deployed $11M+ in two and a half years. He breaks down what AI is actually doing to startup teams right now and shares his unfiltered read on the LPL-Anthropic deal and why it overnight made the biggest firms every startup's competitor.

    Listen now →
  6. Why Half Our Company Are Engineers: Reinventing the IMO
    S1E8
    33:21

    Why Half Our Company Are Engineers: Reinventing the IMO

    Patrick Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Signal Advisors, breaks down his IMO 4.0 thesis — the idea that modern IMOs should implement best practices through technology, not just teach them. From founding RepPro to building an AI-native IMO in Detroit, Patrick shares what it took to create features like One Click Annual Review, TruePay, and Pay Later Marketing that are changing how advisors run their businesses.

    Listen now →
Read the AI & Automation articles