Recently, a major reinsurance broker ran a generative AI pilot that was applauded in the boardroom. It was a contract data extraction system that reduced hours of manual review to mere minutes. It produced clean outputs. Everyone agreed it was a successful proof of concept. That is, until the rollout began.
Executive Summary
Reinsurance brokerages are investing heavily in generative AI, but without standardized processes and operational discipline in place first, the technology cannot deliver. SSA & Co. Managing Director Brian Nordyke explains in this introduction to a series of articles that aims to help reinsurance companies modernize.The problem was that the model had been trained on curated pilot data and was therefore ill-suited to the organization’s complex operational reality: contract setup fields varied by region. Trading partner references followed no consistent convention. Transaction structures differed by team and by year. As a result, the model produced unreliable outputs and teams reverted to manual processes.
