AI: The Solution to Friction…Once Its Own Problems Are Solved

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often positioned as the key to unlocking speed, simplicity, and personalization across life and annuity. However, discussions with industry leaders at the 2025 Sureify Life & Annuity Summit revealed a more nuanced reality.

For many industry leaders, AI remains a challenge. While AI offers meaningful opportunities, the technology is not yet fully mature for many critical workflows, and its effectiveness is entirely dependent on foundational, non-AI work being completed first. Decades of legacy systems, fragmented policy data, paper-driven underwriting, and inconsistent distributor workflows continue to limit what AI can realistically deliver today.

At the summit, the consensus among leaders was clear: once these structural challenges are addressed, AI can be leveraged effectively to help solve many of the industry’s top friction points, including:

Application Complexity & Onerous Underwriting

Leaders see AI as a way to:

• Reduce application length through intelligent data reuse
• Pre-populate forms using existing customer and third-party data
• Support accelerated underwriting for eligible cases

Speed and Lack of Transparency

When paired with modern workflows, AI can help:

• Accelerate decision-making
• Offer real-time updates
• Enable a personalized experience to meet customer expectations of speed

Communication and Engagement Gaps

Leaders saw AI as a way to analyze policyholder and behavioral data to:

• Trigger proactive outreach during key life or contract events
• Personalize communications based on product type and customer preferences
• Improve engagement across long-duration policy relationships

Agent/Distribution Workflow Issues

Leaders described AI as an “assistant” that could:

• Amplify the effectiveness of people, including agents
• Automate routine follow-ups and case tracking
• Help agents focus on complex clients and cases

Lack of Standardization

As carriers prepare for AI, they are compelled to:

• Standardize policy and customer data
• Align workflows across products and distribution channels
• Create a more cohesive experience for agents and policyholders

AI has the potential to meaningfully reduce friction throughout the customer journey. But its success depends far less on algorithms than on readiness. For life and annuity carriers, there is only one path forward to AI effectiveness. We must first modernize core systems, digitize workflows, and fix foundational data challenges. Only then can AI work as an effective tool for improving experiences, efficiency, and outcomes.

This article synthesizes insights from the report, “Beyond Friction: The Life & Annuity Blueprint for Speed, AI, and Customer-Centricity.” To explore your peers' full commentary and the detailed roadmap for the future, we encourage you to read the full report.

AI could vastly reduce friction in life and annuity, but it isn't a quick fix. Without clean data, digitized workflows, and standard processes, AI will only accelerate existing inefficiencies.