The proportion of insurance tasks performed solely by humans will drop to 25% by 2030 from 41% today, an expert from Steadfast says.  

And across all industries, about one-third of work will be fully automated, one-third “collaborative” and one-third human-only, according to the broking group’s director of AI and emerging technologies Steven Tuften.

He says larger organisations are more likely to be transformed by artificial intelligence, with 94% of those with more than 50,000 staff expecting moderate to high AI exposure in the workplace by 2030.

“That includes most of the large insurers, reinsurers, carriers, broker networks around the world,” Mr Tuften said at a Dive In festival session called The future of AI and Work.

“If we have the right mindset, it will handle the monotonous, the repetitive, the soul-crushing parts of our job, and hopefully it’ll free us up to what we as humans do best.” 

Mr Tuften says surveys show manual, repetitive insurance jobs involving data entry will be hardest hit by new technology, with administrative staff set for greatest disruption and claims adjusters also under threat. 

But work for financial advisers, sales agents and brokers is projected to grow because they rely on empathy, active listening and nuanced problem solving.  

Mr Tuften says change is coming to every role and there will be “benefits that are unevenly distributed depending on the kind of role”.

AI can bring “experience compression” to help new employees become more knowledgeable more quickly, and will help with reading, writing and maths. But there are a “lot of skills that AI just isn’t capable of handling effectively at the moment”. 

“Technology is going to affect all of us. We need to be lifelong learners and be curious ... letting the machines take over the drudgery, being resilient, flexible and agile, being adaptable, not being afraid of the technology but embracing it, and thinking about how we can rethink our job in the context of these changes.

“What we do best as humans is we create, we connect with each other, we empathise, we strategise and we lead. We’re not in a battle against machines, we are on the cusp of partnership with it. The loom didn’t end the textile industry, it revolutionised it.”