A consumer's AI agent can now call an insurer and ask for a quote. The possibility of such calls leaves carriers with two bad options: putting a licensed person on the line with a machine, or risk hanging up on a real person.
Both options are wrong. There's a third.
The AI phone calls are already happening. Reuters reported that people using Meta's Muse, the personal AI agent launched in the U.S. this past September, can have it call businesses to book appointments, check inventory or get quotes from contractors. A Meta employee testing this feature said an insurer kept hanging up on Muse after realizing it was an AI caller.
At InsureTech Connect in Las Vegas, Steve Rullo, who is Guardian Life's chief digital and technology officer, told Insurance Business, "We are already seeing providers calling in for verification of benefits with AI." He described healthcare providers using AI to verify patient benefits, often for an entire list of patients in a single call.
The Debate Is About Websites
Since Muse launched, carriers and marketplaces have been deciding whether to allow it access. Insurify quickly blocked Muse, saying it "risks stripping carrier quotes of critical contextual information." Co-CEO Giorgos Zacharia explained, "A quote without its context is not a fair comparison. It is a number."
Shortly afterward, Kin announced that it would let Muse crawl its site so customers can shop for quotes, and Zebra announced an integration the following day. Employers, a workers' compensation insurer, told Dig-In it doesn't allow third-party AI agents like Muse to access its operational systems or customer data.
Each of those decisions is about access to a website or system. None of them covers phone calls, and blocking Muse online won't stop it from calling. I expect insurers will get a lot more of these calls. Handled the old way, they're a cost. Handled well, every one is a quote in front of a real shopper. That's where the real opportunities are.
The Talking Is About 5% of the Value
The answer is simple: AI for AI, humans for humans. Let AI answer calls from other AI, and let people answer calls from people. This way, a family dealing with a flooded basement won't be stuck on hold while a licensed agent talks to a bot.
Most voice AI answers the phone, then sends the caller through a phone menu or to a person. That's 5% of the value. The other 95% is the work behind the call: pulling up the policy, filing the claim, writing the result back to the core system. If AI can handle a machine caller's request at this level, no person needs to pick up, and licensed people can focus on judgment calls, like denied claims.
Most carriers aren't there yet. According to KPMG International's report Unlocking AI value in insurance, only 29% of respondents use AI agents or automation for end-to-end processes. Rullo said Guardian will keep people involved in its AI processes: "We'll still have a human in the loop." For some risk profiles, he said, Guardian wants alerts on exceptions instead of reviews of every transaction.
People should own the decisions. They shouldn't have to answer every call.
You Can't Always Tell Who Is Calling
Carriers also can't always tell if a caller is a machine or a person. Reuters reported that Meta tested having human contractors make some Muse calls without telling the other party. A Meta vice president said the test without proper disclosures "was a miss," and Reuters said Meta has rolled back that test for now. So a call that seems to come from an AI agent might actually be from a person. Zacharia told Dig-In that Muse got around Insurify's bot detection and didn't identify itself.
A system designed to resolve requests can help both human and AI callers. A system that only routes calls can't.
Policyholders Already Draw the Line
In Liberate's September survey of 1,001 U.S. claimants, 50% said they would prefer a claim paid in 60 seconds with no human contact over talking to a person within 10 minutes and getting paid in three days. Another 41% preferred a person on the phone. Of those who chose the fast payout, 55% still want a human involved in every denial.
Fast on yes. Human on no.
Across the whole survey, 61% say a human must review every denial. In the same survey, 86% want to be told when AI touches their claim.
A Hi Marley survey of 550 senior property and casualty decision-makers and 2,000 policyholders in the U.S. and Canada highlights the gap carriers need to close. Eighty-five percent of executives think AI will build customer trust, but only 40% of policyholders agree. Ninety percent of policyholders said it's very or extremely important to know when they're interacting with AI, and two-thirds said their biggest worry is not being able to reach a human when it matters.
Three Rules for Carriers
First, use insurance-specific AI that works within your core systems to answer calls from machines. Sending a bot to a phone menu or a person wastes time and doesn't solve the problem.
Second, keep a licensed person on every denial, no matter what else the AI handles.
Third, be transparent about AI on both sides. Let people know when they're talking to AI, and expect AI callers to do the same.
If carriers follow these rules, they can answer every call, whether it's from a person or an AI. The shopper using a machine gets a response, and the family with a flooded basement gets to talk to a real person. Insurance has always wanted to answer everyone who calls. Now it can.
