News
Insurance job losses now worse than the financial crisis
US employers barely added jobs in September, and insurance remains one of the weakest parts of the labor market.
Employers added a net 29,000 jobs last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' September employment report, released Friday morning. That was well short of the 88,000 economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected, and below the 45,000-a-month average of the previous year. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2% from 4.1% in August.
The release also shows how much of the financial sector's decline has come from insurance. Financial activities employment fell by 7,000 in September and is now 129,000 below its May 2025 peak, the bureau said. Insurance carriers and related activities account for about 90,000 of those losses, or roughly 70%.
Attorneys enter auto claims within days, not weeks - IRC survey
Nearly half of auto injury claimants who hired an attorney did so within days of an accident, the Insurance Research Council (IRC) found. By the time weeks had passed, 80 percent of those claimants had already made attorney contact. Seven in 10 claimants from the past three years reported consulting or hiring an attorney at some point in their claim.
The IRC surveyed more than 2,000 US adults in July 2026. Its report, Public Opinions on Attorney Involvement in Auto Insurance Claims: 2026, updates the organization's prior research on consumer attitudes toward legal representation. The findings land against a backdrop of rising claim severity, where attorney involvement has become one of the primary cost drivers across auto lines.
Advertising is fueling early contact
More than nine in 10 survey respondents reported seeing or hearing attorney advertising in the past year, with television remaining the leading medium. Six in 10 believe that advertising increases the number of liability claims and lawsuits. Roughly half link it to higher auto insurance costs.
About eight in 10 claimants who consulted or hired an attorney reported being referred to a medical provider by that attorney. That referral pattern is a long-standing concern for carriers on auto liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist lines, where inflated medical billing drives claim costs higher.
Awards
State Farm Startup Pitch Competition 2026
[Ed. Note: Congratulations to Ethan Berg, founder Phyll]
The fifth annual State Farm Startup Pitch Competition returned to ITC Vegas 2026. 10 finalists pitched live on Oct 1 for industry visibility, investor access, and a free 2027 kiosk.
The State Farm Startup Pitch Competition at ITC Vegas 2026 - spotlighting the most promising innovators shaping the future of insurance. Each year, this high‑energy competition gives emerging startups an opportunity to showcase bold ideas, gain industry visibility, and connect with the investors, carriers, and partners who can accelerate their growth.
Our pitch was simple: Cameras on the road already see every building, practically every day, and that footage gets overwritten (deleted) whenever the memory card runs out. We keep it, so insurers can see how a property and the surrounding neighborhood changes over time. Now with access to over 400k cameras in the US (1.1m globally), and refresh rates of <1mo for most major cities, we're building the largest visual record of the built world (physical infrastructure) ever assembled. LinkedIn post by Ethan Berg, founder - Phyll
AI in Insurance
Liberate’s AI Agents Take Over the Insurance Night Shift
A policyholder calls her insurance agency to ask what she owes. An artificial intelligence (AI) agent answers, pulls the balance and logs the call in the carrier’s core system, with no employee on the line. Interactions like that have given insurance agencies and carriers back more than 100 million minutes, Liberate, a provider of AI agents for property and casualty insurers, said Wednesday (Sept. 30).
Liberate’s agents handle requests that don’t need human judgment, such as a contractor asking for a certificate of insurance or a policyholder checking on an open claim, the company said. Each request is resolved and written back into core systems. More than 70 carriers and brokers run over 3.5 million transactions a month on the platform.
The freed time goes to different work depending on the role, Liberate said. Adjusters spend less of the day on status updates and more on coverage analysis and reserve accuracy. Licensed service reps who once spent afternoons sending ID cards now handle coverage conversations and retention calls. Some teams that answered phones all day now call customers first, ahead of a renewal or on the second day of a catastrophe.
Liberate Co-Founder and CEO Amrish Singh said the goal was “to stop making people do the work that machines can finish faster.”
Announcements
Liberate Launches AI Intercept for Machine Callers |
Liberate (San Francisco) has launched AI Intercept, a capability designed to identify when an inbound caller to an insurer or agency is a consumer AI agent rather than a person and route the interaction to Liberate’s AI agents.
The company anticipates that personal AI assistants will increasingly contact insurers and agencies on consumers’ behalf to shop for coverage or service existing policies, introducing a new type of traffic into contact centers built primarily around human callers.
AI Intercept screens inbound calls, detects AI callers and automatically routes them to Liberate’s insurance-specific AI rather than occupying human service representatives. Liberate says its AI can then handle quoting, servicing and follow-up through the interaction.
“Insurers are about to get a new kind of caller: AI agents shopping for coverage on a consumer’s behalf,” comments Amrish Singh, Co-Founder and CEO, Liberate. “If a carrier can’t tell a machine from a person, human agents will end up spending their day talking to software while a family calling about a flooded basement sits on hold. AI should handle AI so people can handle people.”
Qumis Brings Insurance Intelligence Directly Into AI Assistants With New MCP Connector
Qumis, the Coverage Intelligence platform for commercial property & casualty insurance, today introduced Qumis MCP, a new connector designed to bring its insurance-specific intelligence directly into Claude and other AI assistants, applications and enterprise workflows.
As organizations across the insurance sector increasingly integrate AI into daily operations, general-purpose tools often lack the domain-specific reasoning and context needed for complex policy interpretation. Qumis MCP bridges this gap, helping professionals carry policy context and insight across their work with AI built by coverage lawyers without moving information or rebuilding understanding.
"Our vision is for Qumis to be the insurance intelligence layer wherever insurance work happens," said Dan Schuleman, co-founder and CEO at Qumis. "Qumis MCP is a step toward that vision, making our coverage intelligence platform the first to bring actual policy analysis into AI assistants and specialized insurance expertise directly into the AI assistants and workflows being used every day."
Commentary/Opinion
China: Advice to Legacy Automakers - Automotive Ventures
Automotive Ventures VC firm is funding the next wave of innovation in transportation technology. We believe the way we invest today is how we move tomorrow.
Fresh off my panel at last week’s Automotive News Congress in Detroit, I wanted to capture a few thoughts while the discussion is still fresh in my mind.
The panel was titled “China’s Growing Influence on the Global Auto Industry.”
The Chinese have a term they call “Involution.”
Involution describes a kind of hyper-competitive, zero-sum rivalry in which companies relentlessly undercut one another on price, compress margins, and race to out-innovate competitors.
We’ve seen this playbook before in Chinese consumer electronics.
Now it is being applied to the automotive industry.
For decades, Chinese automakers benefited from joint ventures with global legacy manufacturers. Those partnerships gave them deep exposure to Western automotive design, engineering, manufacturing, supply chains, and operating practices.
But rather than simply copy what they learned, Chinese companies took the opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper.
They weren’t burdened by 100-year-old manufacturing systems, legacy architectures, dealer structures, organizational silos, or established ways of doing things.
They rebuilt the process from the ground up.
Steve Greenfield
Research
Before You Renovate, Put Insurance on the Project Checklist
Homeowners planning a remodel typically make lists for contractors, budgets, permits and materials, but Mercury Insurance (NYSE/NYSE TX: MCY)) says another conversation belongs near the beginning of the project: homeowners insurance. Major renovations can change a home's physical characteristics, replacement cost or liability exposure, making it important to keep insurance coverage aligned as the property changes.
Americans continue to invest heavily in their homes. The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies projects annual spending on homeowner Improvements and maintenance will reach approximately $518 billion by the end of 2026.
"Homeowners spend a lot of time choosing contractors, finishes and materials, but insurance belongs on that planning checklist, too," said Adam Bakonis, Director, Homeowner Product Management at Mercury Insurance. "A major renovation can change the physical characteristics, replacement cost or even the way a home is used. Talking with your insurance agent before the project begins and after it is completed can help make sure the policy continues to reflect the home you actually have."
Claims
The New World of Accident Reconstruction
Not long ago, accident reconstruction relied primarily on the physical evidence left behind after a collision. Tire marks, roadway gouges, vehicle damage, scene measurements and witness statements formed the foundation of most investigations.
Those elements remain essential today. The difference is that they are now joined by an ever-growing collection of digital evidence that can provide additional insight into how a crash unfolded.
From dashcams and commercial fleet cameras to drones, event data recorders (EDRs) and vehicle infotainment systems, forensic engineers have access to more information than ever before. The challenge isn't simply collecting the data but validating it, interpreting it correctly, and integrating it with the physical evidence to develop scientifically supported conclusions.
CAMERAS ARE CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE
Video evidence has become increasingly common in accident investigations.
According to a recent survey, nearly 30% of U.S. drivers now use dashcams, a figure that continues to grow each year. Commercial fleets have embraced the technology even more rapidly. One industry report found that 84% of company drivers now have dashcams installed in their work vehicles, representing a 29-percentage-point increase over the previous year. Nearly 65% of commercial drivers also reported that their employers require dashcam use.
Embedded Insurance
MSI takes embedded insurance into manufactured housing
MSI is moving deeper into the US housing market with a new insurance proposition for manufactured home communities, bringing coverage and insurance compliance into the same digital workflow used by property operators.
The managing general agency, which is backed by The Baldwin Group, has launched the offering nationwide through LeaseTrack, its insurance tracking technology. The platform allows operators to monitor residents’ coverage while giving residents access to insurance options that can satisfy requirements attached to their leases.
Manufactured housing represents a substantial market in the US. MSI cites Census Bureau data showing that almost eight million manufactured homes are occupied by more than 16 million people nationwide.
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