The Situation
A top 5 insurance brokerage faced substantial challenges in its Certificate of Insurance (COI) issuance process. Rapid delivery of COIs is crucial for the broker’s large and diverse client base, particularly commercial lines customers in industries needing immediate proof of coverage for ongoing operations (e.g., construction). Before working with Roots, the broker’s processes were highly decentralized, creating inconsistencies and costly operational inefficiencies across their various agencies.
The Challenge
The broker’s existing COI process was a patchwork of decentralized operations, with "each agency running its own way and not tracking those metrics," which led to a lack of standardization and oversight. The broker also outsourced a significant portion of their COI processing, incurring "millions of dollars" in costs. This dependency on external partners caused slow turnaround times, often exceeding 24 hours, which was a major pain point for clients needing quick COIs. Outsourcing COI creation also raised liability concerns, as third-party processors were responsible for any errors. The broker’s legal and risk management teams were reluctant to assume these risks by bringing COI issuance back in house.
The complexity and diversity of insurance contracts exacerbated these issues – the broker’s attorneys managed up to 150 different versions, many using conflicting terminologies. Manual review of contracts for specific limits and endorsements created accuracy issues, which further slowed this critical part of process.
The Solution
The broker’s teams engaged with Roots, who deployed a Roots AI Agent, to automate their COI issuance process. Powered by the InsurGPT™ AI model – trained on 300+ million insurance documents and specifically fine-tuned for the insurance industry; the Roots AI Agent delivered 97%+ data extraction accuracy from complex policy contracts.
The Roots AI Agent features customizable output, which can be fine-tuned with the broker's specific data to learn their contract structures and extract necessary information via an API-based integration. The Roots AI Agent’s targeted data extraction capability delivered breakthrough performance, successfully extracting more than 150+ different data fields including identifying various coverages, dollar values, and key notices at 97% accuracy to generate risk-free, error-free COIs.
By automating extraction of required fields and policy language, the Roots AI Agent enabled the broker’s teams to retrieve policy contracts efficiently and push extracted data to a repository, where results were stored for future queries. The Roots AI Agent works 24/7/365, offering automatic scalability to eliminate COI request backlogs, improving quality, turnaround time, and consistency. These operational improvements are projected to reduce manual effort by 80%.
The Impact
Working with a Roots AI Agent, the broker’s has seen substantial improvements across their COI processes:
- Real Cost Savings: a $2-3 million reduction to annual outsourcing expenditures and software subscription fees.
- Improved Accuracy: Demonstrated initial accuracy of 93% in data extraction, up from human levels, with 97% data extraction accuracy after fine-tuning.
- Faster SLA Turnaround Times: Improved COI issuance time from ~ 24 hours to minutes.
- Reduced Manual Effort: 80% reduction in manual effort for COI creation.
- Increased Volume Capacity: Fully integrated into production, the broker’s Roots AI Agent can process 3 million COI transactions annually.
- Near Zero Rejection Rate: The Roots AI agent also reduces the percentage of COIs rejected due to incorrect data to near zero.
Conclusion
After implementing the Roots AI Agent, the broker's Certificate of Insurance (COI) process was transformed from a costly, decentralized, and inconsistent operation into a streamlined, AI-powered system that enhances the insured’s customer experience. The solution drastically reduced manual effort by 80% and improved data extraction accuracy from ~80% with manual effort to over 97% after fine-tuning. By shifting from a reliance on expensive third-party outsourcing to an in-house automated solution, the broker achieved significant cost savings and ensured consistently fast turnaround times with minimal rejection rates, solidifying their commitment to both operational excellence and client satisfaction.
